


Chasing Relentlessly

by TheAutotheist



Series: A Girl, A Guy, and the Never-Ending War [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Captain America: The First Avenger, F/M, Female Steve, Female Steve Rogers, Not Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, Slow Build, Slow Burn, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:27:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 60,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5694736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAutotheist/pseuds/TheAutotheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steph Rogers was meant for more than the USO shows and skimpy outfits they put her in after the procedure. So she'll take any chance she gets to be an actual soldier, especially when she discovers it is also an opportunity to help the man she loves. But when she doesn't find Bucky, she will give everything, and spend however long it takes, to track him down and bring him home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Steph was tired of all the shows. Back in the US, it had been easier to fool herself into believing she was making a difference. It helped that Senator Brandt and his assistant constantly told her about the amazing effect she had on bonds sales. Bonds sales were great, they were bringing in more money so the factories could provide more weapons and support to the soldiers. But it wasn’t how they were going to win the war. Nowhere was that more clear than when she did USO shows for soldiers on the edge of the front lines.

The men catcalled at her and jeered at her. They booed her off the stage and were only excited when the show girls in the short little skirts came back out to sing and dance for them. Who was she kidding? She was just as much a show girl. Her costume was just as ridiculous. Steph pulled the stupid mask off her head and dropped down onto the wooden steps that lead down the back of the stage. 

In the past, the cold European air would have bothered her. Now, she could sit there in her skimpy outfit, staring out at the rain without feeling a chill. The outfit was impractical as hell for someone calling herself a Captain. It was made of blue spandex,with a high collar that wrapped around her neck. But it left her arms bare because the Senator had thought it would look more attractive. At least she wore pants instead of a skirt, even if she did have to wear red knee-high high heeled boots over them. A single white star adorned the chest, with alternating stripes of red and white going down her stomach. She was, after all, Captain America, the All-American Girl. She had to look the part.

Steph ran both hands through her short blonde hair and lowered her head towards her knees. She sat with her head bowed like that for a moment, and then huffed out to herself, “Captain America…”

She sat on that step for a while after the show ended. The other show girls had long since given up trying to be friendly to Steph. She wasn’t like them, after all. And they knew that. Steph never did know how to interact with other girls, anyway. So no one tried to move her from her spot. She’d have another show later, and maybe that one would be better. But for now, she had a few hours to herself. So she pulled out a small notebook and started to sketch. 

Sketching had always calmed her down back in Brooklyn. Bucky told her she could be a professional artist, if she wanted. But they both knew there was no way to live off a dream like that. Still, he never stopped telling her that her art was amazing. Steph paused in the act of sketching the outline of Bucky’s face. More than anything, Bucky was her favorite subject. And it wasn’t just because he was good looking (though, of course Steph thought he was gorgeous). It was more than aesthetics. To be honest with herself, which she never was, it was because she was in love with him. Not that she’d ever tell him that.

She didn’t even know where he was, only that he was out there doing what she should be doing. Fighting the enemy, trying to win the war. She missed him desperately, especially since she’d started doing these stupid shows. She just knew Bucky would have something sarcastic to say about the whole thing. He would be able to say the one thing that could make her feel better.

God, she hoped he was still alive, wherever he was.

 

War sucked. Fighting sucked. Europe sucked.  _ Nazis _ sucked. Not that Brooklyn had been much better, just trying to scrape by from day to day. But at least the people who tried to kill him there didn’t have guns.

Bucky sighed as he readjusted to lie on his back on the cold, wet ground. Tomorrow was going to be rough. They all knew it. It was practically a suicide mission. But they were soldiers, and they followed their orders. So if they were told to go to Azzano to fight some Nazis, that’s what they did.

“Can’t sleep either, Sarge?” Jones asked from somewhere to his left.

Bucky turned his head slightly and saw Jones looking at him. And from his other side, Dum Dum was watching him too. “You idiots want to be dead on your feet tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Dum Dum said.

Bucky snorted and looked back up at the sky. “That’s true.”

They were quiet for a moment, and then Dum Dum said, “So, assuming we don’t die tomorrow, what’re you boys planning to do after the war?”

It was a question that came up every now and then. It was a conversation topic that made them get by, imagining there would be an  _ after _ to the war. So Jones launched into the same thing he said every time, “I’m going to ask my girl to marry me.”

“Shoulda done that before shipping out,” Bucky said automatically. “Maybe she’s moved on without you.”

“Screw you, Sarge,” Jones said, but there was no anger in his voice. It was a well-practiced discussion. 

“What about you, Bucky?” Dum Dum asked. “You finally going to tell that friend of yours that you’re in love with her?”

“What?” Bucky actually rolled onto his side so he could look over at Dum Dum. This was not a part of the normal conversation. Usually, Bucky would say something about getting back to Brooklyn and being popular with the ladies for being a soldier. And then Dum Dum would laugh and talk about all the bars he missed. 

Even Jones rolled his eyes at Bucky. “It’s pretty obvious from the way you talk about her.”

“When do I ever talk about—” Bucky started to say.

“‘You should meet this friend of mine,’” Jones parodied. “‘Toughest girl you’ve ever seen for being a scrap of nothing.’”

“‘Always getting into fights with guys three times her size cause she has to stand up against bullies.’” Dum Dum continued. 

“‘Making me jump in to help her every time.’” Jones smirked as he repeated something Bucky had definitely said a few times. 

“‘But you should see her determination. Never let the hand she’s been dealt by life keep her from fighting her hardest.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Okay, enough. I get it.”

Dum Dum smiled widely. “‘Stupidest, most amazing person...’”

“Okay!” Bucky said, but then looked over to make sure he didn’t wake anyone else up. “So maybe I talk about her a lot. But that’s all true. That doesn’t mean I…”

“No one else would talk about a tomboy like that,” Jones pointed out.

“Look, she’s my best friend, since we were kids. That’s all.” Bucky rolled back onto his back so he wouldn't have to look at them. “Even if she is infuriating as all hell, constantly getting herself beat up like that. She actually wanted to enlist too, so she could fight over here. Because she has no regard for her own safety, only for standing up against bad guys.” He paused. “But that does make her better than almost anyone I know. She’s certainly better than me. Where everyone is busy keeping their heads down, she stands up and fights. Too good for the world and body she was born into… If only everyone else could see that…”

It was quiet for a moment, but then Dum Dum whistled low and Jones said, “Oh, boy, you’ve got it bad.”

Bucky glanced at them again. “I…”

“Come on, Bucky, just admit you’re in love with your best friend,” Dum Dum said.

“If you don’t, some other guy might sneak in and get her,” Jones pointed out.

“Might’ve already, while you’ve been over here,” Dum Dum said.

Bucky didn’t expect the rush of anger at that thought. It wasn’t like he hadn’t exactly thought about it before. But Steph had never really shown any interest in anyone, since she was too busy fighting everyone. But what if some other guy saw what he saw in her? “Oh, damnit all,” he groaned and covered his face with his arm. 

He didn’t need to look over to be able to tell that Jones and Dum Dum were smirking at him.

“Okay, so maybe…”

“No maybe about it, pal.”

“Shit,” Bucky said.

“So you gonna tell her when you get home?”

“She doesn’t want…”

“Wuss,” Dum Dum said.

Bucky glanced at him. “What’d you say?”

“Just man up and tell her.”

Bucky laughed softly and rolled his eyes. “You giving me orders? I’m a higher rank than you.”

“And you apparently have the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Fine. But that’s assuming we live through this thing…”

“Guess you’ve got something important to live for, then, Sarge.” Dum Dum smirked at him one last time before settling down again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I do this thing where I don't like to post stories until I've totally completed them, just in case I go back and self-edit. It has taken me exactly five months to finish this fic, and I can tell you that you are in for quite a long ride. Will try to get a chapter up every day, or every other day if I'm busy.


	2. Chapter 2

Steph caught up with Peggy Carter in London, in one of the bars frequented by soldiers on their down time, of all places. Steph smiled brightly when she saw her. “Agent Carter. It’s good to see a familiar face…”

“Hello Stephany,” Peggy said as she took a seat next to her. “I heard you were now on this side of the pond.”

“Yes.” Steph waved her hand at a poster tacked to the wall advertising her USO shows. “Come see Captain America: The All-American Girl!” She shook her head. “I finally got what I wanted. And I’m wearing tights.”

Peggy watched her. “Not going well, then?”

“No, the shows are going great.” She sighed. “Well, not the ones in front of soldiers.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“When I volunteered for the procedure, this wasn’t really what I had in mind.” Steph swirled her drink around. She’d been nursing the same one all night. It wasn’t that she was afraid of getting drunk, though she had been a complete light weight before the procedure. She didn’t care much for drinking, was the thing.

“You were meant for more than this,” Peggy said, which made Steph look up and meet her eyes.

However, she didn’t get a chance to respond to that, because outside, air raid sirens started blaring. Peggy and Steph looked out the window and then looked at each other again. “Get to the shelter,” Steph said as she jumped to her feet.

“What are you going to do?” Peggy asked.

“Make sure to bring in anyone on the street.” She moved for the door just as the whole building shook. Steph had to catch herself against the doorframe. She heard glass shattering and looked around to see the other bar patrons struggling to get to the basement through the shaking.

With a splintering crack, a beam fell out of the ceiling. Steph didn’t think about it beforehand, but she jumped to shove a soldier out of the way as she caught the beam on her shoulders. It hurt like hell, but it didn’t break anything, so she tossed it to the side and yelled at the frightened man, who could barely be older than eighteen, “Get downstairs!”

He nodded and hurried off. The bomb must have landed close by because other people had been caught in falling debris. The air raid siren had been set off late. Damn Nazis. She rushed out into the street as she heard Peggy’s voice say, “Steph, wait!” from behind her. But she was lost in the rush of people getting down to the shelter.

When Steph got out onto the street, she could see a building down the block had collapsed. It was easy to tell where the bomb must have hit the building.

“Someone! Help, please!” a woman screamed from that direction. “Anyone!”

Steph ran over and found the woman covered in dust and blood from a cut on her forehead. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You should get to a shelter. There’s a bar down the street…”

“My son is still trapped underneath!” she said, looking at Steph with desperate eyes. “I can’t leave him.”

Steph looked at the rubble. She shouldn’t be doing this. She should really wait till the Blitz was over. But the kid could suffocate and die, if he wasn’t already dead. And she felt so useless only there to do shows. So she started shifting bricks, paying attention to what moved, until she could hear crying from under. “Can you hear me?” she called out and the crying paused briefly. “I’m going to get you out.” Carefully, so she didn’t make the whole thing collapse, she pushed up a section of a fallen wall just enough that she could see the stairs hidden under. Crouched in the stairwell was a small boy.

Steph adjusted the weight to her shoulders and held out her hand. “Come on. It’s okay,” she said as softly as she could. The boy sniffled, but he didn’t move. “Just take my hand. I’ll get you out of here.” Steph smiled wryly. “I’m Captain America, after all.”

“Captain America…” the boy said. He scooted slowly up the stairs. “I saw your show. Do we get a Captain Britain?”

Steph laughed, but it came out a bit labored from the weight resting on her shoulders. “Sure. Or you can have a guy running around with a Union Jack on his chest.” She turned her hand palm up as she reached down for the boy. “C’mon. I’ve got you.”

The boy tentatively placed his small hand in Steph’s, and she pulled him up out of the rubble, and in one quick move she shifted the weight off of them towards the building. She pulled the boy up into her arms, even though they were sore, and made her way out to the street again.

“Oh thank god, thank god…” the woman chanted as she rushed over and took the boy out of Steph’s arms. She smoothed his hair back and kissed all over his face. She looked at Steph. “Thank you. You’re an angel…”

“Just trying to help…” Steph said, a bit embarrassed by the praise. “Get to a shelter.” She turned to head down the street and see if she could help anyone else out.

As she walked away, she heard the little boy say, “Mummy, Captain America saved me.”

 

“Irresponsible! Reckless!” 

Steph sighed, but she didn’t move or look down as she got chewed out by Brandt’s assistant. He kept leaning up on his toes to yell at her since she was actually several inches taller than him.

“Do you know what would’ve happened if Captain America got killed in a bombing? How much money we’d lose?”

“Cause it’s all about money.”

The man was silent for a moment. Even Steph was surprised at herself. She had never talked back before. But she was sick of all this, of the charade.

“Look, I saved lives last night. I did some good. I took the strength they gave me and put it to the right purpose. I’m not supposed to be a damn showgirl. I went through that procedure to be a soldier.”

“So because you saved a few people you think you’re some kind of hero now?” The man jabbed at her chest. “If it wasn’t for Senator Brandt’s funding, that you so turn your nose up at, you’d’ve never had that procedure! It’s your civic duty to sell bonds.”

“Is it, really?” a voice said. Steph and Brandt’s assistant turned to see Colonel Phillips and Peggy walking into the room. “Cause it seems to me,” Phillips continued, “that a super soldier’s civic duty might be winning the war.”

“Colonel…” the assistant started to say.

“Shut it. You’ve wandered way out of your jurisdiction. You’re on my playing field now.” He turned to look Steph over. “Agent Carter told me what you did. Sounds damned stupid to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Steph said uncertainly.

“Same stupidity that stopped that Hydra infiltrator from making off with the last vial of Erskine’s serum.” He glanced back at Peggy, who gave one small nod. “You’re not a whole unit, like I wanted. But maybe you can help.”

“Sir?” Steph almost held her breath.

“We’ve got a covert mission we’re going to run. You’d be good for the job. And if you do this right, who knows.” His lip quirked like he was going to smile. “Then maybe you will get to be a soldier like you wanted.”

Steph did smile, however. “Yes, sir.”

“Wait a minute, Colonel,” the assistant stepped between them. “You can’t just commandeer my star.”

“Captain Rogers is a member of the United States Army, is she not?” Phillips asked. He pulled folder papers out of his pocket and thrust them at the small man. “These are her redeployment papers. From now on, we’re making her do something actually useful.” He turned and started to walk away. “Briefing is at 1500 hours, Captain.”

“I’ll be there, sir,” Steph said.

The assistant looked over the papers furiously, but he apparently couldn’t find anything wrong, because he stormed out, in the direction of the telephones, probably to call Senator Brandt and tell him the bad news.

Steph turned to Peggy, who was smiling at her openly. “Was this you?”

“All I did was tell Colonel Phillips how bravely you saved people last night. And I gave him my recommendation as an SSR agent that you should be redeployed.”

“Thanks, Peggy…”

“You do know this will be significantly more dangerous, don’t you?”

Steph smiled widely. “That never stopped me even when I didn’t have the muscles.”

Peggy smiled and shook her head. “I am not surprised.”

“So what’s the mission?”

Peggy nodded her head towards the exit, and Steph followed her out of the dressing room that she was happy to see the last of. “There’s a Hydra factory, thirty miles beyond the Allied lines. We believe they have over 400 POWs there. But it’s too big for any of our forces to assault directly. So the Colonel wants to send in a specialized team small enough to be undetected.”

“And that’s where I come in?” Steph asked.

Peggy nodded. “You and a few others. You’ll get the details at the briefing.”

“400 men… Are they all American?”

“A lot, but not all. We know Hydra has also captured British and French forces. But they recently took out the 105th, and then the 107th at Azzano.”

Steph stopped dead in her tracks, which made Peggy stop and look back at her in confusion.

“Steph?”

“The  _ 107th _ ?” she repeated.

“Yes, why?” Peggy frowned in concern.

Steph quickly rushed up to her and put her hands on her shoulders. “Do you have the casualty list? Do you know who was captured?”

“Yes, of course, but why—”

“Show me!” Steph cut her off.

“It’s back at the base…” Peggy said uncertainly. But she did lead Steph to the London division of the SSR. Peggy found a pretty blonde woman sitting at one of the basement desks and said, “Private Lorraine, can you pull the casualty list from Azzano for Captain Rogers?”

Private Lorraine looked between Peggy and Steph and then nodded before going off to dig through files.

Peggy turned to Steph while she waited. “Now are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“My… best friend is in the 107th,” Steph said. “We grew up together. If he’s…” She couldn’t even voice her thought. Peggy just watched her until Private Lorraine brought back the file.

Steph took it and flipped through the names of the injured, and those who came back. Bucky’s name wasn’t on the list. She went through the list of confirmed dead, but couldn’t find a Sergeant James Barnes there either. But only a short way down the much larger list of missing, she did find his name. “Oh god…” she whispered. She looked up and met Peggy’s eyes. “When does the mission leave?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are looking a little different, aren't they?


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky knew escape was not a reasonable option. But that didn’t stop him from keeping his eyes open every time they took the prisoners out of their cells and watching the ways the guards moved and noting all the exits in the factory. It was probably futile, but just in case, he wanted to be ready.

“Woah, come on, man,” he said quietly as the guy in front of him stumbled. He grabbed the guy by his upper arm and hoisted him back to his feet. “Keep it together.”

“What’s the point, Sarge?” The kid was probably barely even old enough to join the army. Azzano had been his first battle. The guy next to him during the fight had had his head blown off. There were a hundred like him in this factory. “You know we’re all gonna die here.”

“We’re not gonna die,” Bucky whispered fiercely. He glanced around as they continued to make their way back from the factory floor, making sure none of the guards had noticed them yet. “Allies are coming. Gotta get back out there and kick some Nazi ass. Till then, keep going. When you give up, that’s when they win.”

The kid glanced over his shoulder at Bucky. He didn’t say anything before the guards shoved him into a different cell. But Bucky could see the glimmer in his eyes that meant he was getting through. That was right before a sharp jab in the back sent him sprawling into his own cell. He turned to glare back at the guard who had hit him with his nightstick, but the asshole just smirked before locking the cage. Bucky sat against the bars and watched them leave.

“You really believe all that crap you keep telling people, Bucky?” Dum Dum asked from the other side of the cage. 

“Got to,” he muttered back.

“I’m starting to agree with the kid,” Jones said. “You know the Allies can’t send an army big enough to help. They’d be walking into a bloodbath.”

Bucky rounded on him. “So you’re just going to give up?”

“Not saying that…”

“Sure sounds like that’s what you’re saying.” Bucky drew his legs up and crossed his arms over his knees. “I’m not giving up. Not till I get out of here. Or until they kill me.”

“Grim choices,” the Brit they’d brought in the previous day said.

“I got something to fight for,” Bucky said. He met Dum Dum’s eye and said, “I got a reason to get back home.”

Dum Dum nodded. “I’m with you pal. I ain’t giving in to any Nazi bastards.”

Bucky smiled lightly. “Besides, Gabe, don’t you got to ask your girl to marry you?”

Jones smiled just a bit. “So long as the first thing you do when you get back to Brooklyn is plant one on that friend of yours.”

Bucky smirked. “Trust me, I plan to.”

The next morning, clattering bars woke them all before they were ready. The guards banged their sticks on the cages as they made their way through. Rather than unlock them and usher the prisoners out to work, they inspected them. Finally, they stopped at the cage across from Bucky’s and opened it so they could pull the kid to his feet. The poor guy looked scared out of his mind.

Bucky wasn’t really sure what made him jump up. They’d seen the guards take people off to this isolation ward countless times already. No one ever returned. They all knew the Nazis were doing crazy experiments back there. But there wasn’t a damn thing any of them could do about it.

“Hey, leave the kid alone,” he said before he could stop his mouth. Steph wasn’t the only one who had to stick up for the little guy.

The guards turned to look at him, and one of them held up an electric rod like he was going to zap Bucky through the bars, but a voice behind him said, “Wait,” in German. It was one of the few words Bucky recognized since being captured.

A small man with beady eyes and thick glasses came around the cages and peered at Bucky. He wore a lab coat, so Bucky could only assume he was one of those crazy scientists experimenting on Bucky’s men. He smirked and then nodded at the guards, who immediately released the kid and locked him back in his cage. They turned to Bucky and didn’t give him much of a chance to do anything before they unlocked his own cell door and dragged him out. The meager meals they gave the prisoners barely gave him any strength to fight back, so he didn’t.

Instead, he turned to look at Dum Dum and Jones, who had both jumped to their feet when the guards had grabbed Bucky. But they made no move to come after him, especially with the other guards blocking their path. “You get back home,” Bucky told them. “Go to Brooklyn. Find Steph Rogers.” The guard whacked him hard in the side of the head, but he didn’t shut up. “Tell her…” The beady-eyes man had already walked off, and the guards started to drag Bucky after him. “Tell her I love her…” he just managed to get out.

Dum Dum and Jones exchanged worried, resigned glances. “We will, Sarge…”

 

The team was small, incredibly small. One British specialist, one French specialist, and Steph. The other two generally worked covertly for their governments, collecting intel on the Germans to help in the war. As the SSR did not fall under the jurisdiction of any one government, both France and England had decided to lend their services to the rescue of their soldiers, and in an effort that could cripple an important Hydra factory. Steph felt severely outmatched compared to the other two. But she did have super strength, which was one thing she had over them.

“Are you ready for this?”

Steph looked over to see the British operative watching her. He was nice, and pleasant. She felt bad for forgetting his name so quickly, but she thought it was Brian.

“Do not baby her,” the Frenchman said. “Either she is or is not ready.” He was not so nice. And his name was Jean, just to be as stereotypically French as possible.

Steph glared at him. “Yes. I can do this.”

“Coming up on the drop,” Howard Stark said from the front of the plane they were in. He had elected to fly them in since he had recently developed a plane that could fly under German radar. “Remember, radio silence once you’re down there. Contact us once you get out.”

“ _ Ouai, ouai, _ ” Jean said. “ _ Je sais. _ ” He put on a helmet and finished strapping on his parachute. The other two followed suit.

“I think it should actually be  _ nous souvons _ ,” Brian said with a smirk.

Jean glared at him. “Your French accent is terrible.”

“Stop bickering, boys,” Steph said. As a last thing, she picked up the shield she used during all her USO shows. For some reason, she liked it, so she had decided on her own to bring it with her. They hadn’t had time to make her a real uniform, so she wore a leather jacket over her regular blue one. She pulled open the door and the wind started whipping her hair around immediately.

“Give ‘em hell, Cap,” Stark said from up front.

That was the last thing she heard before she dropped out of the plane into enemy territory. For her first time jumping out of an airplane, it went surprisingly well. She didn’t even land that far away from the other two. They were able to sneak into the factory with no trouble at all. And from there, they separated to handle their individual missions. Brian went looking for any intel they could take from the factory, or codes they could use against the Germans. Jean went to set charges so they could blow the whole place to Kingdom Come when they were done. And Steph went looking for prisoners, which she’d volunteered for. 

Peggy knew it was because she was looking for Bucky, but she didn’t tell anyone else. She didn’t want them pulling her off this mission because they thought she might be emotionally compromised. She also didn’t tell anyone that if she happened to run into Schmidt, the bastard responsible for killing Dr. Erskine and causing all this, she would do more than sock him in the jaw.

Finding the holding cells for the prisoners was easy. And hey, the shield really was as useful as Steph had hoped. When she started unlocking cages, someone asked, “Who are you supposed to be?”

Steph looked among all the men she was freeing, desperate to find just the one face she was looking for. “I’m…” she started to say. “I’m Captain America.”

“Excuse me?” a British man said in response.

Steph was distracted. He wasn’t here. Bucky wasn’t here. This was where the prisoners were kept and Bucky wasn’t here. “Look,” she said, when she had enough of them gathered. “There isn’t a large army waiting outside for you guys. They’d have never made it past the front door. There’s just me and a couple allies. I know you’re all weak and tired, but I’m going to need you to fight. You outnumber them. So go out there and cause havoc. Meet at the clearing beyond the gates, and we’ll get you boys home.”

“What about you?” the British man asked.

“I’m going to free as many prisoners as possible. Is there anywhere else they’re keeping people?” She tried to keep the desperation out of her voice as she asked. “I’m… I’m also looking for a Sergeant James Barnes.”

Two men behind the British soldier looked over, but they didn’t say anything. Instead, the Brit said, “There’s an isolation ward in the factory. But no one’s ever come back from it.”

Steph nodded. “Then that’s where I have to go. Get out. Give them hell.” She turned on her heel and left the room, with the sounds of the prisoners escaping following her. She hoped the other two had completed what they needed to do, because they had certainly lost the element of surprise by now.

Steph fought her way through the Hydra agents that came out to stop them. Bashing people in the face with her shield seemed to be quite an effective way of knocking people out. However, when she got to the isolation ward, she found it true to its name. It was isolated from most the factory, and no one seemed to be there. There wasn’t even the hum of machinery that was so pervasive in the rest of the factory.

The quiet made Steph more nervous. So she cautiously made her way from room to room, as silently as possible, with her gun raised as she went. The rooms, or labs, or whatever they were, were mostly empty, with only tables and a few stray papers left behind. She walked into the last room and saw some kind of hospital gurney, the kind with straps to keep patients restrained. Steph swallowed and walked around it. Nasty instruments hung from the ceiling and around the chair. A rusty brown stained the straps and the upholstery. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew what that was.

There was really no one here. They must’ve packed up and left before Steph and her allies arrived. She went over to a desk along the wall and found a map tacked up there, with pins in various locations around Europe.

“Bingo…” she whispered. Quickly, she pulled out her notepad and marked the locations. Any intel she could gather would be appreciated, and certainly couldn’t hurt her standing with Phillips.

Steph glanced around the room again. But there really was no one in the isolation ward. Which meant Bucky wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the factory. She leaned her palms on the edge of the desk and bowed her head. If he wasn’t there, then that meant he must already be…

“Bucky…” she muttered raggedly.

If she’d been there sooner, if she hadn’t been playing show girl… maybe he’d still be alive. All those years. God, she should have told him she loved him before he went off to war. She was such an idiot. And now she was never going to see him again.

Steph crumpled to her knees and put her head in her arm against the desk. Her ragged breaths turned into dry sobs. She thought it hurt bad seeing Bucky with all those other girls. But she would take that any day. Because that was nothing compared to the pain of losing him permanently. Let him never look twice at her. Let him hate her. Just, dear God, let him be alive.

Steph picked herself up and rubbed at her face, making sure she really hadn’t been crying. She shuffled around a few of the papers on the desk, and was about the grab the lot of them and shove them in her pockets so she could rejoin the others, but something caught her eye. The word  _ gefangene _ jumped off the page at her. She recognized that word. Prisoner, it meant prisoner. She picked up the papers and flipped through them. The first couple pages were all text, some kind of notes in German. The next page had a picture of an American soldier, strapped to the chair behind her. There were more notes next to the picture, probably about whatever experiment they’d done on the man. The next page had a different picture, but similar notes. And then the third page made Steph catch her breath.

“Oh god, Bucky…”

He looked bad. She couldn't even imagine the awful things those bastards had done to him. But he had at least still been alive when this photograph was taken. She flipped through the rest of the papers and then a wide smile spread across her face. She couldn’t make out much, but she could tell these were transfer papers. That’s why nothing was here. They’d moved their  _ test subjects _ to a different facility. Which meant there was a chance Bucky was still alive. In that case, Steph decided she was going to do everything in her power to find him, whatever it took. She carefully folded up the documents and stashed them in her pocket before she took off running out of the isolation ward.

Outside was chaos. But it was chaos Steph was happy to join. She immediately jumped into the fray, helping the prisoners escape and taking out as many Hydra agents as she could lay her hands on. She ushered the last few soldiers out the gate and found Brian and Jean waiting for her on the other side.

“Oh good,” Brian said. “This one didn’t want to set off the charges until we knew you were clear.” He nodded to Jean.

Steph looked at him in surprise. “Really?”

Jean glared and picked up the detonator. “Of course not.” He flipped the switch and the whole factory let out a cacophonous boom. Over the sound of the raging fire, he said, “I was only waiting for the soldiers to get clear, not you.”

“Ah.” She caught Brian’s eye, and he smiled at her briefly before moving away.

Steph made her way through the soldiers, checking for wounded. “Come on, men,” she said. As one of the three people who had saved them, and the only American, most of the soldiers paid attention when she spoke. It was astonishing. “We’ve got a long march ahead of us. We’ve got to get moving.” Even more astonishing, they listened to her. Once the wounded were seen to, they started moving towards the rendezvous waiting for them across the Allied lines.

They didn't stop until several hours later, when they determined everyone needed to rest. Thirty miles was a long way to go with wounded soldiers, after all. But they'd come far enough that both Brian and Jean reasonably determined they were far enough away from the Hydra factory.

Steph settled down on the ground slightly away from the other soldiers. Most were too exhausted to do anything other than drop down and fall asleep, anyway. She pulled the folded pieces of paper out of her pocket and carefully smoothed them out so she could flip to the page with Bucky’s photo. She silently looked down at it, and then she touched her fingertips to his face.

“So, Captain America?”

Steph looked up to see a few men standing in front of her. She recognized them from the prison cells. One was the British man who had directed her to the isolation ward. She folded the papers up and got to her feet. “Yeah,” she said. “But I didn’t come up with it.”

“Got another name we can call you?” a man in a bowler hat asked.

“Rogers,” she said. “I’m Steph Rogers.”

The bowler hat man and the black man next to him exchanged glances, but the other three in their group didn’t notice. “Steph Rogers,” the British man said, “it is a pleasure to meet you. And thank you, for getting us out of there.”

“I was just doing my job.” Praise never really sat well with Steph. Probably because she was so unused to it.

“I’m James Montgomery Falsworth,” the British man introduced himself. He nodded to the Asian man beside him and said, “This is Jim Morita.” He indicated the Frenchman on the other side of him. “And Jacques Dernier.”

“And I’m Dum Dum Dugan,” the man in the bowler hat said. “And this here is Gabe Jones.”

Steph nodded. “Good to meet you,” she said.

Dugan watched her with a curious expression on his face. He glanced at the others, and then he said, “You were asking about a Sergeant Barnes back in the factory.”

“I… Yeah, I was.” Steph straightened up slightly. “I thought he’d be there. He was on the list of the missing, presumed captured, or…”

“He was,” Dugan said. “Gabe and I, we’re in the 107th with him.”

Steph took a step towards him. “He was there? When was the last time you saw him?”

Dugan sighed and shook his head. He actually removed his bowler hat too. “I take it by the fact he ain’t here that you didn’t find him.”

“No…” Steph said slowly.

“He was carted off to the isolation ward about two weeks ago,” Jones said. “And no one ever came back from there alive.”

“But…” Steph started to say.

“Look, we’ve got a message for you,” Dugan said. “From Bucky. Told us to track you down and find you. Didn’t expect to do it so soon, though. Guess he wasn’t kidding about you trying to enlist. Though aren’t you supposed to be small and skinny?”

“Procedure turned me into Captain America. Gave me the muscles,” Steph said off-handedly. “What’s the message?”

Dugan sighed. “He wanted you to know that he loved you.”

Steph stared at him. All the men were incredibly silent as they waited for her reaction. “You… you mean cause we were friends, right?”

“No, I mean that guy was head over heels in love with you and never shut up about it.”

“That…” Steph looked between him and Jones. She could feel her heart beating rapidly in her chest. “You must be mistaken. He couldn’t have been talking about  _ me _ . He must’ve meant some other girl.”

“You know some other girl he grew up with in Brooklyn named Steph Rogers?” Jones asked.

“But he never… he never…” Steph put her hand over her mouth. “Oh god, I’m such an idiot…”

Jones looked away, but Dugan looked at her with a mix of sadness and sympathy. He reached out and gently put his hand on her shoulder. “Yeah, we kept calling him an idiot too.”

“He wanted you to know, though,” Jones said. “When it looked like he… wasn’t going to make it.” Both he and Dugan looked down this time.

“He’s not dead,” Steph said, the determination burning in her voice. 

That made the men around her look at her. “Look, I know this can be hard,” Dugan started to say, “but I don’t think he came out of that factory alive.”

“No, look!” She thrust the papers out at them, still with the pages folded back to Bucky’s picture. “He’s alive!”

“Let me see that.” Jones stepped forward and took the papers from her. He quickly looked over the page with Bucky’s picture and then flipped through the rest of the papers. “Where did you find this?”

“In one of the labs. Can you read it?”

“He apparently knows German,” Dugan said with a roll of his eyes.

“Yeah,” Jones said. “They say Bucky and a few other  _ successful _ test subjects were transferred to another facility for further testing.”

“See!” Steph said excitedly. “So he was still alive when he was moved.”

Jones frowned. He flipped back through the papers. “But these don’t say where he was transferred to.”

“That’s what this is for.” Steph held up her notebook and showed them her list of Hydra locations she’s jotted down off their map. “I’m going to find him. And I’m going to cripple those Hydra bases in the process.”

Jones and Dugan glanced at each other. “You really think he’s still alive?” Dugan asked.

Steph nodded. “I do. It takes more than this to kill Bucky.”

“Right.” Dugan straightened up. “Then if you need help, we’re in.”

The others nodded. “He seemed like a good man,” Falsworth said. “He stood up for a young soldier.”

Steph looked around at them. “I can’t ask you to do that. You all just got out of captivity. Going after these Hydra bases, going back into the thick of war right away, that’s too much.”

“You don’t need to ask,” Dugan said. “We’re volunteering. If you’re tracking down these Hydra bases, we’re gonna help. And we’re gonna help you find Bucky.”

Steph smiled. She wasn’t used to other people taking her side. She’d only ever had Bucky before. “Thanks. But I do still need to even get clearance to go after these bases.”

“You just helped take down a major Hydra factory and free 400 prisoners,” Dugan said. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem to get approval for this mission.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're finally getting into the meat of what this story will be all about.


	4. Chapter 4

Growing up, Steph was always the one who got sick, or got in trouble, or got injured. But Bucky had had his fair share of scrapes too. Once, when he was a kid, he got into something he shouldn’t have and broke his arm. He remembered that hurt pretty bad. And there were other things in his life. He was no stranger to pain. But if he took the worst pain he’d ever felt, and multiplied that by ten, it would still come nowhere near the agony he was in from Hydra’s experiments.

At least when he broke his arm, the pain was concentrated to one area of his body. But the shit Hydra pumped into his veins made it feel like he was covered in flames. He couldn’t even focus in on a different area of his body, because it hurt  _ everywhere _ . When Bucky was first taken back there, he had promised himself he wouldn’t scream, no matter what they did to him. He had to imagine everyone had thought that at some point. And everyone started screaming, eventually.

He didn’t even remember screaming these days. But as he would come down off the plateau of pain he had been on for minutes, or days, or weeks, his throat would feel raw and he could hear the ringing in his ears that meant he’d been listening to his own voice. And sometimes he would still be screaming when he came out of the pain.

Sometimes, in the middle of it, the stray lucid thought that would pass through his brain was,  _ Please just let me die already… _

But when he came out of the pain, he’d feel guilty for thinking that. He couldn’t die yet. No matter the message he’d told Dum Dum and Gabe to deliver to Steph, he had to tell her himself. And the only way to do that was to live through this. Those Nazi bastards seemed just as surprised as he was that he was actually doing that.

He knew he’d been moved to a couple different facilities already, but he had no idea how much time had passed. He thought the war had to be still going on, based on the way the scientists still acted, but it was hard to tell. He supposed they could have  _ won _ the war, and that’s why they could keep carrying on, but Bucky didn’t want to believe that. Besides, they wouldn’t be so desperate to keep up their experiments if they didn’t need more weapons.

He rolled the back of his head against the brick wall behind him so he could stare up at the ceiling. Unlike the cells in that first factory, which were all crammed full of POWs, here he was alone. There had been other soldiers, other test subjects. They were never kept in the same cell as him, but were always in the next cell over. But they were all dead now, from whatever these crazy scientists had done to them. He was the last one left. Bucky pulled his legs up and rested his arms on them.

He knew he would only get maybe another hour before they dragged him out of his cell and pumped more chemicals into him and then threw him into some kind of test where he’d have to try to defend himself against five huge Nazis. The crazy thing was, Bucky was getting better at the fights. They kept having to use more guys to beat him down. But they always beat him down. Thankfully, he also seemed to heal faster.

He had no idea what they were trying to create. But whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

 

Dr. Zola stood in the observation deck and looked through the glass window down at the current test in process. This time, Subject—he glanced down at his notes to make sure he had it correct—Subject Number 616 was facing off against eight of their best Hydra agents. And he was winning.

Subject 616 was an interesting one. The other test subjects that had survived the initial dose of serum would always be reluctant to fight. Most would, once they realized if they refused to fight, they would be severely beaten. But not this one. He had started fighting immediately. He hadn’t done very well. It only took two men to subdue him that first time. Which lead to a slight change in the serum. He had done phenomenally better the second time, with only a slight adjustment in the serum. Clearly, this one had already been a fighter. It made Zola wonder if that affected the results of the serum.

“I see you are testing the serum again today.”

Zola turned to see Schmidt standing behind him, with his eyes on the test subject below them. “Herr Schmidt,” Zola said. It was still unsettling to see the blood-red skull face that his leader now bore. A few weeks ago, in his fury, he had discarded the skin he had been trying to keep in place ever since he had taken the first version of the serum. But Zola pushed his unsettlement aside. He was here to build weapons. He liked to create these machines of destruction. Beyond that, he did not want to have anything to do with the war.

“The subject is fairing remarkably well on this dose. Of course, we will have to measure how he heals from injuries sustained from this match. But based on the last readings, his healing is already significantly higher than the average man’s.” He glanced down at his notes. “There is only one… complication.”

Schmidt stepped up to the window so he could stand beside Zola. “Complication?” he asked without taking his eyes off the fight.

“It seems the serum is damaging the man’s psyche. This could be a side effect of the pain, but it means he has trouble keeping a grip on reality. He seems delirious much of the time, without an accompanying fever. His lucid moments have become rarer and rarer. However, this does not affect his performance, as you can see.”

“Yes, I can see.” Schmidt’s sunken eyes followed the movements of the man as he kicked one of the Hydra agents in the stomach and sent him flying back ten feet. “And the others?” Schmidt finally turned to look at Zola.

“Subject 616 is the only one who survived.” Zola glanced at his notes again. “The others either could not take the initial injection, and expired on the table, or succumbed at the second or third. 616 is the only one to repeatedly make it through the injection process.”

“Fascinating,” Schmidt said. “What makes this one so special?”

“If I were to theorize…” Zola said slowly, “and mind, this is not a medical opinion, per se. But I would say this man has a very strong will to live. Strong enough to overcome the damage to his mind.”

“Ah.” Schmidt looked down at the man again. It was hard to tell without skin, but it seemed he was curious, or amused, or both. “Remarkable as that is, it is no use to us. I do not want to rely on my soldiers to have strong wills to live in order to survive the procedure. In fact, I rely on my Hydra agents to be willing to die for the glory of Hydra. Start again. Create a serum that can be mass produced.” He glared down at Zola. “And do it before that American blows up every factory we have. If Erskine can turn a  _ girl _ such as her into a super soldier, then you should be able to do the same for Hydra.”

“And what of Subject 616?” Zola asked. “We will not be able to test a new serum on him.”

Schmidt glanced down at the man again. “Dispose of him. He is no longer of use.”

“Mm,” Zola hummed in agreement. “It is a shame, though, to waste a successful test subject.”

“Do you propose an alternative plan?”

“The man’s mind is already fractured. He has been in our captivity for a while as well. It will not take long to break him completely. From there, it should be fairly simple to… reprogram him, as it were. We could condition him to work for Hydra. Imagine, a super powered Hydra agent that walks and talks like an American. The Allies will not know what hit them.”

Schmidt smirked. “Truly, Zola, you create the greatest weapons. Do it. And keep me informed of the progress.” He turned on his heel and walked for the door. “I am returning to the main facility to complete work on the Valkyrie.” Before he left, he looked back at Zola and said, “Heil Hydra.”

“Heil Hydra!” Zola quickly responded. When Schmidt left, he turned to look back down at Subject 616. While they had been talking, it seemed he had defeated his eight opponents. It was no matter. There were others waiting outside the room to subdue him and return him to his cell. There was a profusely bleeding cut on his forehead and bruising on his face and arms. But he did not seem concerned by the injuries. Instead, as he waited for the guards to take him down, he found the observation deck where Zola stood watching him. He spit blood out of his mouth and glared up at the doctor. 

Zola has been right about his prognosis. The man had an incredibly strong will to live. They would break him of that, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a Bucky-centric chapter! It'll have to hold you over for a little while.


	5. Chapter 5

Steph stood on the edge of the runway, looking down into the ravine some several hundred yards below her. Her shield was strapped to her back and she held her helmet loosely in her hand. Below her, the remains of the Valkyrie still smoked, though the fire had gone out on its own a little while ago.

Their plan to take the main Hydra base had gone extremely well, surprisingly enough. It actually even went better than the plan to capture Arnim Zola, which lead them here. They had thought they had the element of surprise when they decided to try to capture Zola while he was in transit, but he had been expecting them, and had an ambush all ready for Steph when she got on his train. But she was Captain America. She could handle it.

The crazy plan to get herself captured at the main Hydra base actually worked, because Schmidt really did want to have the chance to kill her himself. She was right in thinking he would have a personal grudge against her since Erskine had used the only successful version of the serum on her rather than on Schmidt. From there, everything was chaos, but it was chaos they could get on top of.

Schmidt had made a mad dash for his massive plane, the Valkyrie, but Steph was hot on his tail the entire time. They fought their way around the bridge of the plane even as Schmidt yelled at one of his soldiers to start the thing up. There was no way Steph was going to let them leave that hangar, though. So she threw her shield at the central device which housed the plane’s power source, that strange glowing blue cube. 

In a last ditch effort, or probably in anger, Schmidt grabbed the cube out of the device and turned on Steph as if he was going to try to bash her head in with it. But he hadn’t made it more than a step before he started screaming. Before Steph could do anything, a crack opened in the ceiling, which revealed a starry sky beyond, and Schmidt was atomized into it.

Steph didn’t pause to watch the cube fall to the floor and start to eat away at the metal that made up the plane. Because she’s taken out the pilot. And the Valkyrie was rushing toward the end of its runway, which fell off into a massive ravine. She ran for the side door and just managed to leap out of the plane as it went careening over the edge. It was half luck, and half super soldier strength that allowed her to grab onto the rocks without going over. And before she could fall, Peggy was there to pull her back onto the runway.

The Valkyrie exploded when it hit the bottom of the ravine. The blast was hot enough that they had to turn their faces away from it all the way up on the runway. Peggy had gone to call Howard Stark to come see if he could find anything in the downed plane, and Steph had gone back into the facility for any more information she could find.

After that first mission, she had no problem getting permission to lead her own team in taking down Hydra bases and factories around Europe. She had offered for Brian and Jean to join her, but they both preferred intelligence work. So she took the group of men she’d rescued from the Hydra factory, her Howling Commandos, and they kicked Hydra in the teeth. Her real mission in going after those factories, though, was always to try to find Bucky. She told Peggy that, and all the Commandos knew, but she never told the SSR. As long as she continued to take down Hydra, they didn’t need to know.

Every now and then, she’d find more information about the tests they had run or were running on Bucky, or proof he was still alive and he’d been moved to another facility. But she never found  _ him _ . She’d been at this now for over a year, and she thought this would finally be the end. She was certain the main Hydra base would hold the definitive answers she sought.

But there was nothing there, at least nothing on their super soldier serum experiments. This base seemed to be devoted to the operation and creation of the Valkyrie, for Schmidt’s plan of world conquest. The base was massive, but she’d spent the last two days searching the place while everyone else took stock after the battle and the few living Hydra agents were trucked off in handcuffs. 

Now she watched Howard’s team make its way down the ravine to the wreckage of the Valkyrie. Howard had acted like a kid in a candy shop when he had arrived at the base. A very rich kid in a candy shop, she amended mentally. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on the equipment Hydra had designed with the power of the cube. 

“Have they reached the bottom yet?”

Steph looked over to see Peggy approach the edge and glance down. She squinted, so Steph had to assume she couldn’t quite see to the bottom, whereas Steph had no trouble seeing what was going on down there. “Yeah,” she said as she turned back to the ravine. “Though who knows how they’re going to get any of that back up here.”

“It’s Howard Stark. He’ll come up with some kind of contraption.” 

“Just as long as he doesn’t touch that damn cube.” Steph clenched her hand into a fist at her side.

“I told him, repeatedly, per your orders, that no one was to touch it. I think, based on your report of what happened to Schmidt, no one wants to go near it. Except for Howard, of course.”

“Of course,” Steph agreed. The cold mountain air blew through her hair as she turned her head to look at Peggy. “I can’t find anything about him…” she admitted. She hadn’t even told the Commandos yet.

Peggy looked at her and then sighed. “Steph…”

“I thought for sure that if he wasn’t here, there’d at least be some kind of information about his exact location. But there’s  _ nothing _ .”

“Steph, you just took down the main Hydra base. They’re done. Without Schmidt, they will crumble. And reports say Germany is close to surrendering completely. We’re  _ winning _ .” Peggy turned Steph away from the edge so she could take her arm and look into her face. “Hydra is finished.”

Steph looked down at her. She did know this was so much bigger than just finding Bucky. It was so much bigger than her. But she couldn’t help that her heart ached. Winning the war, defeating Hydra and Hitler, that would all be fantastic. But without saving Bucky too, she’d still feel empty. That’s how selfish she was. She wanted everything. “I know…” she said quietly. “But I’ve got to find him.”

Peggy squeezed her arm gently. “Well, it should certainly be easier now that their main head has been cut off.”

Steph glanced down the ravine again. “Let’s hope so.”

 

Peggy was right, of course. It wasn’t much longer after they took out Hydra that they won the war. The SSR and the Howling Commandos were back in London when the news came over the wire of Hitler’s suicide. It seemed like only a few days later that Germany unconditionally surrendered all forces, and Victory Day was declared. Steph had never, ever seen such a celebration as when people took to the streets of London that day. Even she temporarily forgot the ache of her long search in light of all the excitement in the air.

“Here’s to the best damn soldiers the Axis ever had the misfortune of facing,” Dugan said as he held up his glass.

“Cheers!” everyone replied and there was much clinking.

While Steph hardly ever took part, even she was drinking tonight. They deserved this win. They needed to celebrate. “Here’s to the Howling Commandos,” she said.

After more drinking and rousing cheers, Dernier said happily, in his thick accent, “I return to my home, free of Nazi pigs!” The others chuckled. Dernier’s English still wasn’t great, but he’d picked up enough after spending most his time with them for the last two years.

“I agree. I’m looking forward to returning to my estate,” Falsworth said.

“Well, not all of us have estates,” Morita joked. He wiped foam off his mouth from his beer. “Gotta be like Heaven after the war.”

Falsworth laughed. “You are welcome to visit. You are all welcome to visit.”

“Maybe we’ll take you up on that some time,” Steph said with a smile.

Dugan clapped Jones on the back, almost sending him head first into his glass. “You finally get to go home and marry your girl!”

“Hell yeah, I do!” Jones replied with a big grin on his face.

“You’d better do it first thing you step off the dock,” Steph said. “With how you’ve been going on about it.”

“Trust me, Cap, I plan to.” He continued to smile like an idiot.

“And when you have the wedding, tell me, and I’ll make the trip over for it.”

“Make the trip over?” Jones asked. “Steph, you live in Brooklyn, that’s not that far.”

“I’m not going back to Brooklyn,” Steph said and then took a sip of her drink. She lowered the glass when her comment was met with silence. 

“Cap, the war’s over,” Morita said. “We get to go home.”

Steph shook her head. “I’m not going home. Not ‘til I find Bucky. My mission’s not over.”

The other Howling Commandos exchanged glances. Finally, Dugan set his glass down on the table with a clink of glass on wood and looked at her. “Then I’m sticking with you.”

“What?” Steph looked at him, and then looked at the others. “No, this is my mission. Like you were saying, the war’s over. You all get to go home.”

“Don’t really have much of a home to return to,” Morita said. “I don’t mind hanging around for a little while longer.

“I can’t ask you guys to join me on this,” Steph said, a bit desperately. She didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s chance at peace and happiness.

“You ain’t asking,” Dugan said. “We’re volunteering, Cap.”

Steph looked at the others. “Then I’m forbidding you three. You all just talked about going home. I want you to go home. That’s an order.”

Jones sighed. “I’d stick around if you wanted, Cap.”

“No, I  _ want _ you to go home and get married and have tons of kids and be happy.”

Falsworth smiled. “Well, if you need assistance, I won’t be too far away.”

“ _ Moi aussi, _ ” Dernier said.

“Thanks…” Steph said. She shook her head. “But I don’t have any leads. I didn’t get anything from that main Hydra base. So I don’t even know where to start.”

“I may have an idea about that,” Peggy’s voice said from over Steph’s shoulder.

She turned to see Peggy wearing the most drop-dead gorgeous red dress. And she was smiling, probably having come from some other Victory Day celebration. “What do you mean?” Steph asked, realizing what Peggy had said.

“We still have Arnim Zola in custody.”

“That bastard was the one who dragged Bucky off to experiment on in the first place,” Dugan said quickly.

Steph glanced at him and then looked back at Peggy. “So what do you propose?”

She smiled. “I think Zola is due for another round of interrogation.”

 

“I was wondering when you would visit, Captain.” Zola did not look up from the book he was reading as Steph approached his cell. He was kept separate from other prisoners, so Steph didn’t have to worry about being overheard.

“You think you’re so important that I would have come to you personally?” She had her helmet off, but she still stood in her uniform, with her shield on her back. It looked more intimidating than her brown uniform that she was supposed to wear on the SSR base.

Zola smirked and turned the page of his book. “So you say, and yet here you are.”

“The war’s over, Zola. Germany unconditionally surrendered two days ago. Schmidt is dead. Hydra is gone.”

Zola finally looked over at her, but he did not stand from his chair. “It seems you have won, then, Captain. So what could you possibly want from me?”

“Your experiments,” Steph said. “We know you were trying to recreate Dr. Erskine’s super soldier serum. And that you were testing it on POWs.” She paused, and then said, “I’m looking for one man you captured. Sergeant James Barnes.” She glared at Zola, hoping her gaze was boring into his beady little eyes. “Where is he?”

Zola looked at her and then chuckled. “Do you really think I would remember one prisoner’s name? My test subjects were nothing more than numbers.” He smiled in amusement. “This man must be quite important to you, for Captain America to come ask me about it personally.”

“Tell me where you performed your experiments.”

“Oh, I am sure you destroyed most of my facilities by this point. You and your band of men.”

Steph frowned. He was carefully avoiding answering all her questions. “You are going to start telling me what I want to know…”

“Or what? Captain America is going to torture a prisoner?” He scoffed and stood up so he could walk over to the bars. “I do not think so. You are supposedly too righteous for that.”

“We are going to lock you away where you will never see the light of day again. Or worse. You are going to be held accountable for war crimes, for all the things you’ve done. And they’ll have you hanged. Tell me where to find Sergeant Barnes and maybe you’ll get off easy.”

Zola held up his hands and shrugged. “I simply cannot answer your questions, Captain. As I said, I do not know the name.”

Steph glared at him, but before she could give him any satisfaction, she turned and walked out of the detention area. Outside the room, there was a one-way mirror, that allowed viewers to see who spoke with prisoners. “Did you catch that?” she asked as she walked into the viewing room.

“Yeah. He’s a bastard,” Dugan said.

“Looks like he’s not going to answer any questions.” She rested her hands on the edge of the window frame as she stared at Zola through the glass. He had returned to his book after she left. “I can’t even tell if he knows anything and is refusing to say, or if he really doesn’t know anything and is using it as an opportunity to mess with me.”

“Hm,” Peggy said. She looked through a few papers in a file she was carrying, and then she plucked one out. “I have an idea.” She handed Steph the rest of the file and then walked out of the room.

“What’s she doing?” Dugan asked as they watched her appear through the doorway in the detention area.

“They send another woman to attempt to question me?” Zola asked as he rose to greet Peggy at the bars. Clearly he considered her much less of a threat than Steph. 

Peggy did not respond to his remark. But she did walk right up to the bars, herself. “You are going to tell us where you last saw this man,” she said as she turned the paper she had brought with her so Zola could see it. Steph recognized it. It was a record of Bucky’s deployment, and a part of her extensive file of any scraps of information she’d found on Bucky.

“As I told Captain Rogers, I simply cannot be expected to remember one man—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence because Peggy swiftly reached through the bars, grabbed his collar and yanked his head forward so his forehead cracked against the bar. She let him go just as quickly and he stumbled away from her, with his hand raised to his head. She had pulled him forward hard enough that he had cut his forehead on the bar.

“Now, you are going to answer me this time.” She held up the paper once again. “Where was the last place you saw Sergeant James Barnes?”

“Even if you find my facility, I have been in here for months. He is surely dead by now.”

Steph straightened up, and then glanced at Dugan.

Dugan stared through the window and then smirked at her. “You know what he just admitted?”

“That Bucky was alive just before we captured him!” Steph said in excitement. “Dum Dum, he’s alive!”

Peggy kept her game face on, however, and gave no indication that she recognized Zola’s slip. “Tell me where the facility is,” she said slowly and as viciously as she could. “Unlike Captain Rogers, I am under no symbolic obligation to be moral.”

Zola stared at her and then curled up his lip. “Outside Warsaw.”

“Lovely. Thank you.” Peggy turned and marched for the door.

So Zola ran to the bars so he could yell after her, “You won’t find anything! Schmidt would have had everything moved after I was captured. This is a fool’s errand!”

Peggy did not respond and slammed the door closed on him. As soon as she walked into the room, Steph raced to her and hugged her tightly. “Peggy, you’re amazing!”

Peggy smiled and patted Steph on the back. “That man deserved a good whack on the head.” As she stepped back, the smile dropped off her face. “You know, he is probably right, Steph. Schmidt would have surely closed down Zola’s facility once we captured him.”

“But it’s a lead! And Bucky was definitely alive there only a few months ago. It’s more than I’ve had for a while.” Steph smiled. “So thank you, Peggy.”

Peggy couldn’t help but smile in return, albeit a bit sadly. “Of course, Steph. Just… don’t get your hopes up too much.”

Steph shook her head and took her paper back from Peggy. “He’s alive. I know he is. And I’m going to find him.” She looked back at Dugan. “Ready to go to Poland?”

“Whenever you are, Cap.”

“Good. Cause that would be now.” 

He nodded and the two of them made their way for the door. Dugan paused so he could squeeze Peggy’s shoulder as he passed her.

Peggy just sighed and mumbled, “Keep an eye on her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Steph.


	6. Chapter 6

Just as they all expected, Zola’s facility in Warsaw was deserted by the time Steph, Dugan, and Morita got to it. But they found a few files left behind with locations of other facilities used for the express purpose of experimentation. The papers were encrypted, of course, but they had long since broken those codes. And thus started the trail of breadcrumbs Steph followed after the war.

Before she knew it, over a year had passed since she interrogated Zola after V-E Day. Peggy had returned to New York after the war to work for the SSR division there. She had even come over on a mission not too long ago with her new team and needed Steph and Howling Commandos’ help. 

Jones did marry his sweetheart. But Steph couldn’t bring herself to go to the wedding. She had planned to, she really had. But the thought of returning to the United States without Bucky was too much for her. So she backed out saying something important had come up. Instead, she sent a particularly lavish gift from Paris with Dum Dum and Morita. They knew her lie was bullshit, but they didn’t call her on it.

Morita had planned to stay with Steph until she found Bucky, but when the Americans bombed Japan in August, he decided he’d had enough and had to get away from the vestiges of the war. Steph couldn’t really blame him for that, and didn’t try to stop him at all. She picked up other soldiers, other Americans who weren’t ready to go home. When the Commandos weren’t looking for old Hydra facilities, they hunted down Nazis, which was something other people could get behind.

Steph hadn’t realized how much time had passed until Peggy showed up at her door one day out of the blue. “This is definitely some old Nazi training ground,” Steph said over a map. “But we have reason to believe Hydra was using it too.”

“Right,” Dugan said as he looked down at the map and crossed his arm. He was her only original Howling Commando left, so she often consulted him on their missions even when she consulted no one else. “When do you want to leave?”

“0600 tomorrow,” Steph said and straightened up. As she did, she saw who was standing in the doorway of the map room of the underground SSR base. “No way.”

“Still at it, I see,” Peggy said.

Dugan turned to look at her and smiled. “Hey Peg.” He went over to hug her. “What brings you to this side of the pond? I heard you were doing big things with Stark.”

“Oh yes,” Peggy said as she stepped back from the embrace.

Steph took Dugan’s place and hugged Peggy tightly. “It’s good to see you, Peggy.”

“It is good to see you too, Steph,” Peggy said. She pulled back so she could smile at her. “I have missed you.”

“So why are you over here?” Steph asked. “You aren’t still running missions for the SSR, are you?”

“No, no,” Peggy said. “I’m actually here to talk to you.” She looked between them. “Both of you.”

“Not that we aren’t happy to see you,” Dugan said. “But a phone call wouldn’t have worked?”

“Not for this conversation.” She looked at Steph again. “This big thing Howard and I are doing, it’s called SHIELD. And we want you two to be a part of it. And not just as agents. As founding members.”

Dugan stared at her. “Are you serious? You want us helping to run a huge spy organization?”

“Yes, of course. You’ve more than proven yourselves in the war. No one is more qualified than Captain America and her Howling Commandos. And there is also a significant salary.”

“Well damn.” Dugan turned to grin at Steph, but found she had her arms crossed and was frowning at the ground.

“Peggy…” Steph said slowly. “You know why I’m here. You know what I’m doing. I can’t just drop that and go back to the States.”

Peggy sighed. “That is the other reason I wanted to do this in person. Steph, it’s been over a year since the war ended. When was the last time you even found anything about Barnes?”

She could’ve lied or avoided the question. But she didn't. She answered honestly. “Six months ago.”

“Six months,” Peggy repeated for emphasis. “I know Hydra had secret little hidey-holes all over Europe, but they couldn’t have kept moving Barnes just ahead of your raids.” She paused and took a breath. “At some point you are going to have to let him go. He’s… he’s probably been dead for quite some time now.” She looked at Steph, trying to catch her eye. “Have you thought that perhaps that is why you have been unable to find him?”

Steph shook her head. “I can’t just give up on him. And I’ve found proof he survived that first factory. Even Zola said—”

“Zola? He’s the one who sent you on this most recent wild goose chase. He even directed you to a facility he knew would be empty. Because as long as you never found evidence he was dead, you would keep searching forever.”

Steph opened her mouth, but she couldn’t think of an argument to that. A part of her agreed with Peggy. More than just a part. If she stopped and thought about it, she’d known this was coming for a while. But as long as she never stopped and thought about, she wouldn’t have to admit he was dead. She leaned her hip against the map table, crossed her arms, and looked at the ground.

“I know,” she said at last. “I know… I need to let him go. You’re right. It’s time.”

“Cap,” Dugan said quietly. He took a step forward and put his hand on her shoulder.

She looked up at him and tried to smile. “You’ve known for a while we weren’t going to find him, haven’t you, Dum Dum?”

“I was open to the idea of a miracle,” he said. “But mostly I was here to make sure you didn’t get yourself killed.”

“Yeah…” After a moment of silence, Steph looked over at Peggy. “I have one condition.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“I want…” Steph swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I want to give him a proper funeral, with all the honors he deserves.”

Peggy nodded. “Of course. We can arrange that with no problem.”

Steph sighed. “Good.” She glanced back at the map behind her. “What about that, then? We can’t just leave a Nazi facility alone now that we know it’s there.”

Dugan looked at Peggy. “One last mission? And then we go home.”

Steph’s heart tightened painfully at the word  _ home _ . She nodded. “One last mission.”

“Then count me in,” Peggy said. “It will be good to get out into the field again.”

“It’ll be good to have you on our side,” Steph said as she pushed herself away from the map. “Like I said, 0600 tomorrow morning.” She walked past them for the door. “Be ready to leave then.”

 

Steph realized as they entered the facility that she didn’t have the same apprehension and nervous energy that she used to have. That feeling of  _ maybe this time _ she would finally find Bucky. And she realized she hadn’t had that feeling for a while now. So at some point she had realized Bucky was dead, and she was never going to find him. It seemed her head never got the message, though.

Some Nazis had been using the facility as a safe house after the war. And of course they tried to fight Steph’s team, even though they stood no chance of winning. Steph was glad for Peggy’s help and lamented the fact that she hadn’t worked with her more in the field during the war, because she was an ace.

Getting in, defeating the Nazis, and gathering them up only took about two hours. They really hadn’t stood a chance against the Howling Commandos. The rest of their time would be devoted to cataloging everything of use at this base. The first things Steph always checked for were papers. All the men they’d caught were regular Nazis, not Hydra. But she found Hydra papers mixed in with the rest. During the war, she’d had Jones teach her German, so she wouldn’t need to constantly go to him for translation.

She picked up the Hydra papers and flipped through them. The information was mostly the same stuff they’d seen before. One new thing was a half page on some kind of weapon that was supposed to be deadly to the Americans. But the war ended before they ever got a chance to use it.

“Here, pack these up with the rest,” she said to one of the young guys who was collecting the papers. He nodded and added the Hydra notes to his pile.

Steph made her way out of the command room and headed down the hallway. She stopped halfway and looked at the bland, white wall beside her. And then she took a step back. There was definitely an air current coming through the wall. She ran her fingers over the wall space and found the almost unnoticeable seams of a hidden door. She pressed down on the segment of wall, and it slid in and moved sideways. Beyond the door a set of stairs lead down into darkness.

“Found a secret basement,” she said into her radio. “Going to check it out.” She hooked her radio back into her belt and held her shield on her arm as she started down the stairs.

“ _ Do you need backup? _ ” Dugan’s voice crackled over the radio.

The stairs weren’t that long, only about two floors below ground level. When she reached the bottom, she pulled out her radio and said, “Negative. Not much down here.” The light wasn’t great. There was only a single flickering bulb hanging from the ceiling. But Steph could see cage bars across the room, so she made her way towards them. “Hang on,” she said into the radio when she noticed the dark shape of a person behind the bars. “I think there’s a prisoner down here, I’m going to—”

The radio fell from her hand and hit the concrete floor with a crack and clatter. But she didn’t pay it any attention. Because her eyes had adjusted to the low light, and she was able to make out the prisoner’s face. He sat with his back against the side wall of his cell, so she could only see his face in profile. Even then. There was no mistaking.

Steph cautiously made her way to the cell door and broke the lock off with one powerful whack of her shield. The sound rang through the small room, but the prisoner didn’t react at all or look at her. So she pulled the door open and walked into the cell until she stood in front of him. She slowly knelt down so she was at his eye level, and that was when he finally noticed her. The prisoner lifted his head so she could meet his sunken eyes with her own.

“Bucky…” she said in shock. Her heart was in her throat and she had no idea what she wanted to do, cheer or cry, but she knew one of those things would happen. He looked awful, thin and probably malnourished. His eyes had a haunted look to them. She remembered them being so playful before, but now the blue-grey color was so flat. From what she could see, he also had a couple of bruises on his face and arms. And there were probably more that she couldn’t see.

He stared at her for a moment without recognition, and then he snarled, “Who the hell’s Bucky?” He lunged at her.

But he was apparently as weak as he looked, because he passed out halfway to her, and rather than block, Steph caught him in her arms so he wouldn’t hit the concrete floor. “Bucky, oh god, Bucky…” she mumbled as she held him. “I can’t believe it… I found you. I found you…” Even though he was unconscious, she turned her face into the side of his head and held him close.

“Steph!” Dugan’s voice came from across the room. She hadn’t even heard him come down the stairs. “Are you down here? Your radio cut out and we thought you were in trouble!”

Steph looked up to face Dugan when he came to the cell, with Peggy on his heels. Both of their eyes widened comically when they saw her sitting on the floor with an unconscious, malnourished Bucky in her arms. 

“Dum Dum, Peggy…” she whispered. “He’s alive. Bucky’s alive. I finally found him…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this scene. And now things get interesting!
> 
> (And yes, everyone and everything needs to use the "Who the hell is Bucky?" line. It is the one constant from the comics, movie, and cartoons.)


	7. Chapter 7

Steph, Dum Dum, and Peggy took Bucky to a hospital back in London almost immediately. They left the other, newer members of the Howling Commandos to finish going over the Nazi facility for anything else they ought to confiscate. By the time they reached London, the bruises on Bucky’s face and arms had mostly faded. Steph didn’t know what to make of that, so she pushed it to the back of her mind.

Bucky was unconscious for the whole trip, and when he finally did wake up in the London hospital, it was to moan deliriously. The doctors there could tell he was definitely malnourished, and hooked him up to an IV to help with that. But they couldn’t explain anything else. He wasn’t sick. He didn’t have a fever.

After a day of Steph stubbornly sitting by his side, waiting for him to come back to full consciousness, Peggy decided it was probably best to take him back to the United States, where Howard Stark could have his team take a look at Bucky.

“I have a feeling that what is going on here is beyond any regular doctor,” she said by way of explanation.

Steph agreed almost immediately. After a long transatlantic flight, she found herself back in New York after being gone for over three years. Howard Stark was just as curious to see Bucky as any of his doctors were. It turned out they had already set up a base for SHIELD at Camp Lehigh, so they just used the medical facilities there to take care of Bucky.

While the regular doctors in London had no idea what was wrong with Bucky, Howard was able to figure it out almost right away after looking at Bucky’s bloodwork. “You’re not going to like this, Steph,” he said when he found her pacing back and forth in Peggy’s office since she wasn’t allowed in the same room as Bucky.

“What is it?” Steph asked, looking between him and the chart.

“We…” he glanced at Peggy “thought maybe Hydra was trying to create their own version of the super soldier serum Erskine developed. But it was nowhere near as perfected as the one Erskine used on you.”

Steph could feel her blood run cold. “They tested a bastard version of the serum on him?”

“Looks like it,” Howard said. “We’ll be able to know more when we get all the papers you collected from that Hydra base. But as far as I can tell, the serum worked, in part. He’s healing incredibly fast, like you do. And when he attacked a doctor, it took five men to hold him down.”

“Is he awake?” she asked. “Can I see him?”

“He’s still delirious. Give him a couple days of proper nourishment, and maybe he’ll be normal. But this is all stuff no one has any experience with.” He looked at her. “You were the first super soldier, and you didn’t have any negative side effects.” He sighed. “Till then, I’d say it’s probably best if you don’t hover around him.”

“Oh…” Steph glanced back at Peggy, and then looked at Howard again. “If he is lucid again, you’ll let me know, though, right?”

“Of course, Cap. In the meantime, did Peggy tell you about our job offer?”

Peggy groaned. “Timing, Howard.”

“What?” he asked. “It’s not like she’s going to be doing anything else.”

“It’s okay, Peggy,” Steph said. She tried to smile, but it didn’t quite make it all the way to her face. “I need something to take my mind off the fact I can’t do anything right now.”

“Great! Let me show you what we had in mind.” Howard lead Steph from Peggy’s office, while Peggy just sat there and shook her head.

 

Bucky did come out of his delirious fugue state a few days later. Steph had convinced Howard to let her be the one who spoke to Bucky. He actually agreed with her that it would probably be best if any explanation came from her. And then he told her, with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows, that there was a security camera recording  _ everything _ in the hospital room. Peggy called him a lecher and a voyeur, and Steph just shook her head because she certainly would never try something in a hospital room.

Steph didn’t tell them about what Bucky had said just before he had passed out. That chilling  _ Who the hell’s Bucky? _ She didn’t know what to make of it. He hadn’t seemed delirious, but maybe he had been. Until she had a chance to really talk to him, she didn’t want to bring it up with anyone, not even Dugan.

So when she found out he woke up, she rushed down to the hospital room, and got there just as a doctor was finishing shining a light in his eyes to check his reaction. Bucky sat patiently and put up with the process. When he was done, the doctor nodded at Steph and left the room. The click as the door closed behind him seemed to echo in the very quiet room.

Steph took a seat next to the bed and Bucky watched her. They stared at each other for a moment, and then he wetted his lips and said, “Where am I?”

“The United States,” she said. And then, “New Jersey,” for clarification. He didn’t react to that at all, so she asked, “Do you remember where you were before?”

“I was…” he hesitated. “I was a captive, or a test subject… There were experiments and…” He looked at the wall to his side.

“Those people,” Steph started to say, trying to keep her anger in check, “they were called Hydra. And they’re not going to hurt you again. They’re gone. We found you in their facility and brought you home.”

He turned to look at her again and both his eyebrows rose in surprise. “No more experiments?”

“Of course there are no more experiments,” she said quickly as she leaned forward in her seat. “You’re safe here,” she said with as much assurance as she could get in her voice.

He seemed relieved by that. “What is this place?”

“It’s a hospital. We want to make sure you’re okay after everything Hydra did.” He nodded like that made sense to him. “It’s part of an Army base,” Steph continued. “For the people who fought to stop Hydra.”

His eyes moved around the room and took in the security camera, before settling on her again.

Her question burned in her throat, trying desperately to get out. She wanted to let him get his bearings first, to let him ask whatever he wanted. He deserved that. But she couldn’t help her desire from getting out. So quietly, she said, “Bucky…”

He looked at her curiously. “Bucky,” he repeated tonelessly. “Why’d you call me that?” he asked.

Steph’s heart sank. “Because that’s your name.”

“Bucky?” he repeatedly skeptically.

“It’s a nickname. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.” She paused to take in his reaction. There was absolutely no recognition. “Do you… do you remember anything about who you are?”

He opened his mouth automatically like he was going to reply, but then he didn’t say anything. He seemed to think over the question, and then he finally said, “No. I don’t recognize that name at all.”

“Okay,” she said softly.

He continued to watch her. And then he said, “And you? Who are you?”

For some reason, that hurt even more than Bucky not knowing his own name. “I’m… My name is Stephany. Steph,” she quickly corrected. “I’m Steph Rogers.” It was perhaps the most awkward introduction she’d ever given.

“Well, nice to meet you, I guess,” he said. “Thanks for saving me from the crazy scientists.”

“It’s…” She tried to smile and surprised herself when she actually pulled it off. “It’s our job.” She carefully rose to her feet. “Well, I’ll let you get some rest. You’re still recovering. If you need anything, there’s a buzzer by the bed.” He watched her as she walked to the door. She paused and looked over at him. “I’ll be around too, if you need me.” He didn’t say anything, so she left quickly.

Once she was out in the hall, she stopped to take a deep breath. But she didn’t have long to herself, because Peggy came around the corner. She gave Steph a concerned look. “Steph…”

She must have been watching the security feed live in her office, but then, Howard probably did the same. Steph didn’t let her say anything else. “The important thing is he’s alive. And who knows, maybe he’ll get his memory back?” She smiled weakly. 

“Are you okay?” Peggy didn’t seem to buy her charade.

“Of course,” Steph said quickly. “Like I said, he’s alive. That’s all that matters right now…” She side-stepped around Peggy and continued down the hallway. “I’ll be in the gym if anyone needs me.” Peggy didn’t try to stop her, so as soon as she was around the corner and out of sight, she ran the rest of the way to the gym. She didn’t let up against the punching bag until much later that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, poor poor Steph.


	8. Chapter 8

“You’re back,” Bucky said in surprise when Steph returned the next day.

“Told you I’d be around,” Steph said as she took a seat opposite him again. She set a stack of books down on the bedside table. “Thought you might be bored. So I brought you some stuff.”

“Thanks…” he said slowly, but he continued to watch her. “You’re not a nurse. Or a doctor.”

“Nope,” Steph said. “I’m a soldier.”

“You?” he asked in shock.

“Yeah, me. Think a woman can’t be in the Army?”

“I didn’t say that.” He tilted his head slightly as he looked at her. “Just surprised.” He frowned and said, “So when you said you found Hydra’s facility, you meant you personally?”

“Yeah, that was my team,” she said. “I… I found the hidden room, myself, where they had you locked up.”

“Is that why you’re checking on me yourself? Some kind of personal interest?”

“Yeah, something like that…” she said quietly.

He looked over at the books. “So how long am I going to be here? Seems like a lot of reading material.”

“I wasn’t sure what to bring,” Steph said, avoiding his question, “considering the whole, you know, no memory thing.” It hurt, in a way that made her chest feel tight like it used to when she could still get asthma attacks. But she pushed aside the pain that came with Bucky’s lack of recognition and spoke to him like she used to.

He picked up one of the books and looked at it. “I can’t remember who I am, but I can still read? How does that make sense?”

“Howard Stark—that’s the guy who runs this place—explained it to me that it’s a different part of your brain, memories are separate from things you learned.”

“So that’s why I know what a hospital is, but I can’t tell you the president’s name.” He looked through the rest of the books. “But I know there  _ is _ a president. So I guess that’s something.” He sighed and set the books back down. “Nope, don’t know any of these.”

Steph tried not to sigh. All the books had been Bucky’s favorites. She wasn’t surprised he didn’t remember them considering he hadn’t even known his name. At the very least, she knew he’d like them. “Well, it’ll all be new to you, then.”

“Thanks for the books, I guess.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, and stared at her. “Am I a prisoner?”

“What? No, of course not!” she said, taken aback by the question, and the serious manner in which he asked it.

“Then when can I leave?”

Steph hesitated and chewed on her bottom lip. Even if Bucky seemed physically healed, SHIELD wasn’t going to release him back into society until they knew exactly what Hydra had done, especially with no memory.

“Thought so.”

“You’re not a prisoner,” she said slowly. “But we don’t want you going out there and getting yourself killed. You’re not fully healed, even.”

“Well, you treat me better than Hydra, I’ll give you that.” He pushed back on the bed so he could scoot across it to lean his back against the bare wall behind him. “So what if I do get better, get my memories back and all that?”

Steph did sigh out loud then. “You’ll probably be free to go. We’re just going to have to see what happens. Because I don’t know, Bucky.”

“Bucky,” he repeated after her again just as he had the other day. “I must’ve gone by that a lot.”

“I can call you James, if you’d prefer that…” she said hesitantly. Never in her life had she called him James. He had even introduced himself to her when they were kids as Bucky. She hadn’t even known his name was actually James for weeks after that.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Doesn’t make much difference to me. I don’t remember, one way or the other. So you can call me Bucky, if that’s what you’d like. Maybe it’ll jog something.”

“Still nothing, then?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Just… those tests and experiments…” He looked down at his hands. “There’s something seriously wrong with me, isn’t there?”

“Why do you say that?” She leaned forward more in her seat.

“Cause I’m  _ fine _ . And I might have no memory, but I know enough to know that a guy who’s been in captivity for…” he glanced up at her, “I’m guessing a long time…”

“Two years, eight months, and five days,” she said automatically, and then snapped her mouth shut. A random, concerned savior wouldn’t keep that kind of information at the forefront of her mind. But he didn’t comment on it.

“Yeah, that. A guy who’s been in captivity for over two and a half years, shouldn’t be physically okay. He should be fucked up.” He paused when she frowned, but he didn’t apologize for swearing. And she didn’t call him out on it. “And I guess I am, in the head. But otherwise, I feel fine.”

“You have healed remarkably quickly…” Steph said. 

“So what’s wrong with me?

She straightened up in her chair and ran her hand through her hair. “We don’t know exactly, but we’re trying to figure it out.”

“You’ll  _ tell _ me, right? It’s about me, after all.”

“Yeah, of course, Bucky.” His lip quirked when she used his nickname, but he didn’t comment on it this time. “That’s what Stark and his team are working on.”

“Whatever it is, whatever Hydra did to me, that’s the real reason you’re keeping me here, isn’t it?”

Well, Bucky Barnes had always been smarter than most people gave him credit for. “I didn’t lie before. I will  _ never _ lie to you.” He blinked at the serious way she said that. “We do want to keep you here so you don’t hurt yourself. But… yes… they’re worried about public safety from whatever Hydra tested on you.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’d be worried too. Whatever they pumped into me, it wasn’t no cure for the common cold. Considering they always wanted me to fight after, to see how many guys I could take down…”

“They were looking to create a super army, before they lost the war.”

Bucky looked at her. “The war. I, uh, I assume it was a recent thing. I’ve heard people mention it. But I don’t…”

Steph watched him. “You don’t remember anything about it.”

He shook his head. “Can you… tell me? Tell me what it was, who we were fighting?” He looked down at his hands. “And where the hell did I fit into all of that?”

“Sure thing, Buck.” She leaned forward again. “This is how it started…”

 

“Okay, this is bull.” Dugan said as he threw his hand of cards down on the table. “How can you have no memories and still manage to beat me at poker, Sarge?”

“Must just be naturally good,” Bucky said as he dragged chips over to his ever growing pile.

Steph smiled at the exchange. She had brought Dugan in with her the next time she went to talk to Bucky, and he insisted on bringing in a card table so they could play poker. They weren’t playing for real money, of course, since Bucky had nothing to gamble with. Just like with Steph, Bucky didn’t recognize Dugan at all, but he listened as Dugan told him about how they’d both been in the 107th. Before they’d gone in, Steph had asked Dugan not to mention anything about her past with Bucky. She didn’t want to dump years of baggage on him when he couldn’t remember anything. It was better if she pretended like they hadn’t known each other.

“Can’t have anything to do with you just being bad at poker, could it, Dum Dum?” Steph joked as she collected the cards and started shuffling them. She, herself, wasn’t particularly great, but she knew when to fold, which was something Dugan never did.

Dugan barked out a laugh in response to her comment, which she had expected. What she didn’t expect was for Bucky to laugh as well. The sound took her by surprise because she realized she hadn’t heard him laugh in over three years. It sent a shard of ice right to her heart. But she tried to cover it up with a smile. Dugan noticed, of course, but he didn’t comment on it.

Instead, he said, “Maybe you’re right, Cap.” He clapped her on the shoulder, perhaps to help her cover up the pain in her eyes.

It was easier to give a real smile. She started dealing out the cards again and Bucky looked between the two of them. He tilted his head slightly. “Cap. Why do you call her Cap?”

Dugan laughed. “Cause she’s a Captain. Captain of the Howling Commandos.”

“The Howling Commandos?” he asked, sounding out the words as he said them.

“That was the name of our unit,” Dugan said. “Still is.” He leaned back in his chair. “After the war, we hunted down rogue Nazis and other war criminals. That’s how we found you.”

“Your team,” Bucky said as he looked at Steph. “Not just the team you were on. Your team.” Steph wasn’t sure what was up with the repetition, but it seemed to help him commit new stuff to memory.

“Yeah. Captain Steph Rogers, at your service,” she said and then gave a lazy salute.

He didn’t look at her with shock or disbelief, in fact, he seemed impressed. She was reminded that Bucky had never told her what a girl  _ should _ do. The only times he’d tell her not to do something were health-related, never gender-related. Bucky always had her back, growing up. God, she missed that.

“What else did you do, you Howling Commandos, during the war?” Bucky asked as he picked up his hand.

“We took down Hydra, that’s what he did!” Dugan said as an immediate response. He took one look at his cards and then plucked three out and set them on the table. Steph dealt him three new cards.

“That was our mission, the reason the SSR formed our team,” Steph said without looking up from her cards.

“SSR?” Bucky asked.

“Strategic Scientific Reserve. Peggy was an agent of theirs before she became the co-director of SHIELD with Howard.”

Bucky frowned. “Beautiful dame, brown hair, British accent?” he asked. In between Steph’s visits, Howard and Peggy had also spoken to Bucky, to let him know where he was, and what they were doing.

“That’s the one,” Steph said and pushed aside the brief flare of jealousy at Bucky’s description. It was true, Peggy was beautiful. You didn’t have to be attracted to her to see that. “Though she can kick your ass from here till next week if you cross her. I’ve still never even managed to beat her in a fight.” After she returned to the United States, she and Peggy had started sparring together. Steph had mostly relied on her strength during the war, so it couldn’t hurt to learn how to put it to the best use.

“Oh yeah. I’d never bet against Carter in a fight,” Dugan said.

Steph shook her head. “But the SSR didn’t realize what a good thing they had, so Stark snatched her up for SHIELD. During the war, though, she would help us on our missions against Hydra. She was there during our final assault on their main base in the Alps.”

“And Steph here saved the whole damn world by killing that madman Schmidt, and stopping him from launching this massive bomber plane.”

“I didn’t kill him…” Steph said, even though the official report contradicted her. She had certainly caused his death, but she hadn’t killed him personally. Sometimes, she still regretted that. But there was no easy way to explain what had happened, so in the report, they had given her the credit.

“Schmidt?” Bucky froze. He went so still in fact, that it looked like he wasn’t even breathing.

Steph and Dugan exchanged glances, and then Steph carefully set her cards down. “Bucky?” she asked quietly.

“Schmidt,” he said again. “I… I know that name. That was… He was… They called him Red Skull.”

“Yeah, cause he had no face,” Dugan said. “He was the head of Hydra.”

“I saw him. When they… put me through tests. He’d be there, with that doctor.” He shook his head and dropped his cards so he could push himself back from the table and prop his elbows on his knees. He ran both hands through his hair and let his head hang.

Steph quickly got up from her chair and walked around the table so she could kneel down next to him. She hovered her hand over his arm, but she didn’t quite touch him. “Bucky…” she said again, softly, soothingly.

Without looking up, he said, “He’s dead?”

“Yeah,” Steph said. “We stopped him.”

“Good.” There was a hardness in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Would’ve liked to do it myself…”

“I know what you mean.” Gently and carefully, she rested her hand against his upper arm.

He turned his head so he could meet her eyes. There was pain, and confusion. Whatever he had remembered, it wasn’t good. And it made Steph’s heart ache, to think of everything that had been done to him.

After a moment of staring silently at her, he let out a deep breath and pulled back so he could sit up straight. “Sorry.”

Steph pulled her hand back and rose to her feet as well. “No need to apologize,” she said quickly. “It’s not your fault…” She looked down at him curiously. “Did you remember something?”

Bucky tapped his finger on the tabletop and didn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah. But it’s just more of the same. Like you said, I was there for years.” He paused and shifted his cards around on the table. Both Steph and Dugan watched him carefully. “What about the doctor? Zola. He dead too?”

Steph hesitated and glanced at Dugan. She’d promised she wouldn’t lie to him, not when he asked a question directly. “No… But he’s imprisoned.”

“He won’t be seeing the light of day any time soon,” Dugan added. “Plus, we got to watch Carter slam his face into the bars once.”

Bucky’s lip quirked, but he didn’t quite smile. “Would’ve liked to see that.”

“It was really something.”

Steph walked around the table and took her seat again. She kept her eyes on Bucky as she did, but the tension from before had left his body. He sighed and flipped his cards over. “I think I ruined the game.”

“It’s okay, Bucky,” Steph said.

“Stops me from repeatedly making a fool of myself by losing,” Dugan said, which did make Bucky smile.

“I want to know how you beat him,” Bucky said. He finally looked up again, so he could look across the table at Steph. “The Red Skull.”

So Steph told him the whole story, with help from Dugan for the parts she didn’t see, like the assault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thanks for all the comments! It makes me really happy to see that people are reading my stories and that they invoke strong emotions in them. 
> 
> Second, it is a god damned shame that no one has made a decent Clarity Steve/Bucky fanvid. 
> 
> Third, yup, Bucky has got amnesia bad. I did tag this as slow burn, after all.


	9. Chapter 9

Steph paused outside what was becoming, for better or worse, Bucky’s room at the SHIELD Camp Lehigh base. She raised her hand and knocked gently, not wanting to presume and just walk in, like she—and everyone else—had been doing. 

Bucky mumbled a, “Yeah?” so she opened the door and walked in.

“Hey,” she said with a smile.

He looked up at her and his lip quirked like he was going to smile too, but he thought better of it. “Hey.” He was sitting on the bed with his legs crossed in front of him, and one of the books she’d brought him in his hand. “You’re not on babysitting duty, or something, are you? You visit a lot.”

Steph shook her head. “I come cause I want to. That was a hell of a thing you went through, so I want to make sure, myself, you’re okay.” She paused with her hand on the back of one of the chairs at the card table. They’d decided to leave it in there after their poker game, so he could use it for whatever. “Unless I’m bugging you. I don’t have to come by so much…”

“Nah.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and set the book down on the bedside table. “I like the company. You’re better than the doctors.” He scowled. “And Stark. What is up with that guy, anyway?”

Steph shook her head and smiled. “No one knows. He’s just like that.” She nodded to the book. “How are you liking that?”

He glanced over at the book. “It’s interesting. Keeps surprising me.”

Steph frowned. She supposed that meant he wasn’t remembering that he’d read it before. Well, getting his memory back like that had been a long shot anyway. “How’d you like something different for a change?”

Bucky turned to look up at her. “Like what?”

She smiled. “Come on. Time to get out of this room and stretch those muscles again.”

He raised one eyebrow. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’ll show you.”

He followed her out of the room curiously. They only got to the end of the hallway before one of Howard’s men tried to stop them. “Captain Rogers, Mr. Stark doesn’t want Sergeant Barnes to leave his room.”

Steph rolled her eyes. “Tell Howard that Sergeant Barnes is with me. I take full responsibility for him.”

The man looked between the two of them, clearly unsure about what to do.

“We’re not leaving the building, don't worry,” Steph continued. When he didn’t seem convinced, she said, “Do you really want to try to stop  _ me _ ?”

So he sighed and stepped aside. “I’ll let Mr. Stark know.”

“You do that,” Steph said as she and Bucky moved around him.

Once they were out of earshot, Bucky glanced back. “What was that about?”

“Howard is a paranoid old jerk.”

“He think I’ll try to hurt people?”

“Something like that.”

Bucky turned to look at her. “You don’t?”

She turned her head to look at him and was surprised to discover they were the same height. She’d been so much shorter than him before the war. And this was the first time they were standing side by side since she’d had the procedure. “I don’t.”

He smirked. It wasn’t quite his old smirk, but it was close enough that it made her heart beat rapidly. “You take responsibility for me?”

“Yeah, so don’t do anything to make me look bad.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

She smiled at him and then stopped in front of a set of double doors. “Here we are.” She pushed them open to reveal a training room on the other side.

Bucky looked around as he followed her in. The place was spacious, and Howard had been fitting it with bigger and badder training equipment. But she was mostly interested in the padded floor that took up most the center of the room. “What are we doing here?” Bucky asked.

“Training, of course.” She lead him out to the center of the mat. “That’s what you do in a training room. Sitting around will only do so much to make you better. Besides, I want to see what you’ve got.”

He looked at her, the worry clear on his face. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“You won’t hurt me. Trust me. Now let’s see what you can do.” She slid her right foot behind her and held up her fists.

“Okay.” He mimicked her pose. “Well, you asked for it.” He ran at her and raised his fist to punch her, but she dodged easily and jabbed him in the side, sending him sprawling down to the mat.

“Come on, Barnes, I could see you coming from a mile away,” she said as skipped back a few steps.

He got to his feet and looked at her carefully. “Okay…” he said slowly. He didn’t lunge right into an attack again. This time he feinted right and then swung with his left arm.

Steph still easily saw it coming. She ducked around the punch and took his arm, using his own momentum to swing him over her head and onto his back. She leaned over him and put her hands on her hips. He winced and then tilted his head back so he could look up at her upside down. It wasn’t that Bucky was really a bad fighter, but his style was all street. It wasn’t refined at all. Meanwhile, she’d been learning from Peggy.

“Come on.” She held out her hand and he looked at it for a moment before taking it so she could pull him up. “All that extra strength you’ve got is no good if you can’t connect.”

“No kidding. Hydra was only ever interested in how hard I could punch.” He looked at her as he straightened up.

“Not surprising. But I’m going to show you how to fight properly, and where to channel that strength.”

He smiled like he was amused, but he mimicked her pose again.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. Just seems like an unusual situation, is all.”

She smiled as well. “In case you haven’t noticed, this whole thing is made up of unusual circumstances.”

“I did actually notice that. So why’re you teaching me how to fight?”

“You’ve got super-human strength. I’ve got a feeling you’re going to need it.” Steph smirked lightly before she launched into her own attack.

 

Dugan watched as Steph tripped Bucky onto his back and pinned him down with her forearm at his throat. After a moment of struggling, he rolled his eyes and tapped the mat, so Steph got off him and helped him up.

“So how’s the training going?” Dugan asked with a smile.

“Well, she keeps kicking my ass, if you couldn’t tell,” Bucky said.

“You’ll get better,” Steph said. “You should have seen how Peggy threw me around the room when we got started.”

“I do not believe Peg threw you around the room,” Dugan said. “She might have got some good hits in, but I doubt she could even lift you to throw you across the room.”

Steph smiled in amusement. “It’s a figure of speech. But it is true Peggy is much better than me.” She smiled at Bucky. “And you’ll get better.”

“Already doing a lot better than I would,” Dugan said. “You can actually keep up with Steph. But we never had much hand-to-hand fighting in the war.”

“Come on, let’s go again,” Steph said. She barely gave Bucky a chance to get ready before she swung her leg up at him.

He didn’t flinch, though. It took him a few times to get to that point, which was still remarkably fast. He lifted his arm and blocked her high-kick, and then shoved her off. Steph moved with the momentum and jabbed her fist at his side. He didn’t see the hit coming, but he took the hit and grabbed her arm. 

She twisted sideways to twist her arm out of his grasp and move behind him. She tried to swipe his legs out from under him, but he jumped and put some distance between them so he could regain his footing. 

They continued back and forth for a while, and Steph was impressed by how much Bucky had actually picked up. But in the end, she still got him.

“One day,” he said as he brushed himself off again. He shook his head and went to a water fountain against the wall.

“Yes, but that’s not today, Bucky,” Steph teased.

“Impressive, though.” Dugan said. “Once you’re recovered, Sarge, you’ve got to join back up with us.” He looked at Steph. “Or, are you going to be part of SHIELD?”

Bucky glanced at Dugan and then looked at Steph. “Is that the plan?”

“It’s possible, if you want it.”

“It’s not really like I have much else to do.” He dipped his hand into the stream of water and then ran his fingers through his hair, wetting it, and letting the water drip down his face. “I don’t really have a life I remember to return to.”

Steph glanced at Dugan, and opened her mouth to say something, anything about their shared past, something she could give him so he could know who he was a little better, but she couldn’t think of what to say. She was still scared to tell him anything.

Bucky went still, though. He was still holding down the handle on the water fountain, with his other hand under the stream. He stared at the wall and then mumbled, “It was a kid…”

“What?” Steph took a couple steps closer.

“They were going to take a kid. So I tried to stop them…”

Steph heard Dugan make a noise and glanced over to see he was staring at Bucky. “You mean…” he started to say slowly, “in that factory?”

“Yeah…” Bucky turned to look back at them again, or more, at Dugan. He didn’t seem to notice Steph at all. Steph’s head whipped back and forth, looking between them. “Probably hadn’t even been old enough to enlist. They were going to take him for those crazy experiments. But when I told them off, they took me instead…” He shook his head and turned to prop his hand against the wall.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s what happened,” Dugan said.

“We were captured because we didn’t stand a chance against the force they sent to Azzano, which included that massive tank.” Bucky looked over at Dugan again. “I was the one who kept trying to convince everyone we’d make it out. Like…” He pushed himself away from the wall and walked towards Dugan. “Jones had a girl back home he needed to marry.”

“He did marry her,” Dugan said. “They’re expecting a baby.”

Bucky smiled widely. “But you. You just wanted to shoot some Nazis and get a drink after.”

Dugan laughed. “Sounds like me. So you remember?”

“Yeah. I remember the 107th, and being in that factory, and being dragged off…” He looked down at his hands. “And the experiments after…”

“And… do you remember why you were so determined to live through that?” Dugan asked slowly. He glanced at Steph, which made Bucky look at her as well.

Steph held her breath, just wishing, and wishing, and…

“Just knew that I couldn’t give them the satisfaction of killing me.” He frowned at Steph. “You weren’t there, though.”

“I…” Steph started to say.

“Oh, right! You said she came later, and launched this big rescue mission to get everyone out of the factory.”

Steph swallowed thickly. It was too much to hope for. She knew that. But her heart still sank. “Yeah. From what we could tell based on what Dugan and Gabe said, it was a week or two after they’d moved you to another facility.”

Bucky nodded. “Extremely bad timing, then.” He looked back at Dugan. “That kid. He survive?”

“As far as I know. He was still there when Steph rescued everyone from the factory, and I’m pretty sure he made it back to London. Don’t know what happened to him after that. Never got his name. And that was when the Howling Commandos were formed, so that’s what we focused on.”

“Well, sounds like my dumb move wasn’t in vain, then.”

“So how far back do you remember?” Steph asked quietly. He didn’t remember her. If he’d remembered her, he would’ve said it right away. But maybe he remembered something.

“I’m from Brooklyn, right?” Bucky asked. He crossed his arms. “I don’t remember any of that. I don’t remember enlisting or anything. I just remember being over there.” He sighed and ran his hand through his wet hair. “Seems like my whole life was that war.”

“I actually remember what I did before, and it still seems like my life was that war,” Dugan said. He put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder and shook him slightly. “But I’m glad you’re remembering something, Sarge.”

“Yeah, it’s a good sign,” Steph added on. She smiled when he turned to look at her. She was happy for him, even if she was a bit disappointed. “Maybe you’ll remember the rest too, eventually.”

“Here’s hoping,” he said. “So did you tell Gabe I’m alive?” he asked Dugan.

“Sure. But you didn’t remember, so we figured it wasn’t worth it for him to come up here.”

“Can’t believe I actually missed the whole him marrying his sweetheart thing.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, Cap didn’t go to the wedding either, even though Gabe was one of the Howling Commandos.”

“Hey,” Steph said.

“Really?” Bucky looked at her. “Why not?”

“I, uh… Something came up and I couldn’t get out of Europe.” She scowled at Dugan for putting her on the spot.

“Well, I’d like to say hi to him, since I remember him, and everything.”

“Yeah. He’ll be excited you’ve remembered.” Dugan looked at Steph. “We can let him know, see if he’ll come up and visit.”

She smiled. “Sounds good.” She looked away and headed for the door. “I’m happy you’ve got some of your memories back. Probably a good point to end for today.” She paused at the door and glanced back, but then she shook her head and walked out of the room.

 

Gabe was thrilled when he found out Bucky was getting his memories back. He made a special trip up to visit, since Howard wasn’t ready to let Bucky leave the SHIELD facility yet. He was excited to see Bucky again, and Dugan. And the three of them started talking on top of each other. Steph lingered and watched from the doorway with a smile on her face. It was clear Bucky didn’t remember anything before the war. So once, Gabe caught Steph’s eye and gave her a sad look. 

She had to leave the room after that. She left the guys to catch up with each other. For some reason, it was harder to be around Bucky around other people who knew what he had forgotten than to be around him by herself. When it was just them, she could almost pretend it was like old times, when they were both unaware of how the other felt.

Gabe went and found Steph on her own later. She was sitting out behind what had used to be the barracks, sketching. She was drawing Brooklyn, the bridge, her old apartment, Bucky’s. 

“How are you holding up, Cap?” Gabe asked as he sat down next to her.

“I’m fine. It’s not so bad.” She smiled. “Getting used to being out of the war. How are things?”

Gabe watched her. “Good. You hear we’re going to have a baby?”

She smiled. “Yeah. Dum Dum told me. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” He looked out in front of them for a moment. “You know, I wouldn’t even be here, or married, or about to have a baby, if you hadn’t saved me and all of us. You are a hero, Steph.”

“That’s just propaganda.”

“No it's not. They put out all those newsreels, but it was true. You are a real American hero, and you saved the world and helped win the war.” He turned his head and smiled at her. “So you deserve to be happy. 

“I don’t really seem to have a choice in the matter,” Steph said.

“I believe it’ll happen. You never stopped believing you would find Bucky again. So I find it hard to believe that you’d give up on the idea that Bucky will remember you, eventually.”

Steph glanced at him. “Yeah… But I’m tired.” She set her notebook aside and leaned forward to run her hands through her hair. “I’m tired of waiting.”

“Yeah. Waiting is the worst part. But sometimes you have to. And both you and Bucky are the kind of people who don’t give up or lose hope. I’ve seen that from both of you. So hang in there, Steph.” He took her hand and squeezed it gently before getting up. “I’m heading back. I’ll see you around, Cap.”

“Bye…” Steph watched him walk away, and then she picked up her notebook and flipped back a couple pages to where she’d drawn her and Bucky as kids, when everything seemed simpler. 

 

Steph could hear the arguing even before she reached the door to Bucky’s room. He’d finally moved to a regular room, with regular windows, and a regular bed, instead of a hospital bed. So Steph was surprised to see the medical equipment set up on the table when she walked in.

“What’s going on?” she asked and looked over at Bucky and Howard, who both looked pretty angry.

“Oh, hey, Steph,” Howard said nonchalantly. “Can you explain to your boy why I need to take blood?”

“No! No more fucking tests. I’ve been through enough tests.” Bucky turned to look at Steph. “You promised. You said no more tests!”

Steph took a step towards them quickly. Bucky was already not fond of Howard, and this certainly wouldn’t help. “Howard, what are you doing?”

“We need to run some tests, to see how’s he’s healing. But this guy,” he waved his hand at Bucky, “won’t let us.”

“I did promise, Howard.” Steph took a step closer so she could get between them. “No more tests. He’s fine. You can see that. You don’t have to do any more tests.”

“What is wrong with you two? He’s got the super soldier serum. We can’t just leave that alone.”

Steph stared him straight in the eye. “Yes, you can. You’ve run more than enough of your own tests. And you have Hydra’s notes. What else do you need to do?”

“Hydra was only concerned with destructibility. There are so many more applications, as you, yourself, can attest to. It’s our duty to find out what else we can do with the serum.” It honestly sounded like Howard actually believed in what he was saying.

“I’m not your god damned pin cushion,” Bucky said. His voice took on a low, threatening quality.

Steph turned and held up her hand to stop him, but then she faced Howard again. “He’s right, Howard. I signed up for this. I chose to go through the procedure. He didn’t. He had the serum forced on him.”

“Chose?” Bucky asked. The threat in his voice was gone as he glanced at Steph in confusion. “What procedure?”

“What do you mean what procedure?” Howard asked in shock. “The procedure that turned her into a super soldier too!” He flailed his hand at Steph this time.

That made Bucky round on Steph so fast, she almost didn’t see it. “What?”

“Oh come on,” Howard continued. “You couldn’t have possibly thought she was just that strong naturally! She was the first super soldier. The serum the Nazis created and tested on you was in reaction to the success with Steph.”

Bucky took a step away from Steph. “You went through that voluntarily?”

Steph frowned. “I thought… I thought you knew. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Now it makes sense…” He looked between Steph and Howard, but his expression was still one of betrayal.

“Really? You had no idea?” Howard actually laughed. “Come on, she’s Captain America. How could she do that without the muscles?”

“Captain America…”

“Yeah, from the newsreels, and the comics,” Howard continued.

“Howard,” Steph said, but her eyes never left Bucky.

“You weren’t captured until after Steph started the USO shows, so you must’ve heard about her. Are you telling me you never put two and two together?”

“Howard!”

Howard stopped and looked at Steph, and then he turned to Bucky. This time he got a really good look. Bucky’s eyes had a hollow look to them, and his pupils were dilated. He clenched his fists at his side.

“Captain America…” he said again. “I have a mission.” He glared at Steph. “Kill Captain America.”

Before Howard could react, Bucky snatched one of his syringes off the medical tray and stabbed it down at Steph’s face, but she held up her hands and blocked, catching his wrist. She twisted it so he would drop the syringe, but he retaliated by swinging his leg up and catching her in the side.

Steph fell to the side, but she used her lower position to swipe his legs out from under him, and shove him away from Howard, who could only stare at the sudden fight between the two super soldiers in front of him. But Steph couldn’t spare much thought for him because Bucky was on the offense once again.

It was quickly becoming quite clear to Steph that all those times she had trained him and sparred with him, he had been holding back. Drastically. Even though he was using all the same moves she had taught him, she had to struggle to keep up. Especially since he seemed set on trying to kill her this time.

“Kill Captain America,” he kept chanting as he attacked her with more and more force. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.”

Steph was vaguely aware of Howard saying something into a radio where he had retreated to a corner on the other side of the room. Steph couldn’t focus on him. She had to focus on Bucky, who was definitely trying to kill her, and seemed to have fallen into some kind of blank daze. She ducked around a punch and grabbed his arm, and then swiveled behind him to pull his arm up behind his back.

The move that might have stopped a regular person didn’t stop a super soldier. Instead, Bucky shoved Steph back against the wall, hard, making her loosen her grip. And that was all he needed to duck down and wrench his arm away so he could spin and use it to pin her against the wall by her throat.

One of her hands went to his to try to pry it off, but the other scrambled at her side for some kind of weapon. She found the medical tray. But she didn’t want to seriously injure him, so she grabbed the tray itself and dumped the equipment off it. She bashed it against the side of his head and used his moment of disorientation to get free. She tackled him to the ground and turned him so she could yank his arm back once again.

“Bucky!” she yelled down at him. “It’s Steph! I’m not your enemy!” 

“I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you! It’s my mission!” He snarled at her as he swung his other arm at her.

He really wasn’t going to stop. So he pulled harder until a very audible pop filled the room and Bucky cried out in pain. She flipped him so she could grab him in a choke hold. He continued to struggle and try to attack her even as he was losing oxygen. Just then, more people burst into the room. Howard must have called for backup.

They didn’t waste time to inject something into Bucky’s arm, which helped move him toward unconsciousness. So she let him go, and let them start to restrain him. He glared at her one last time as she stepped back. There was so much hatred in his eyes that it made Steph’s breath catch.

Just before he lost consciousness, he mumbled, “I’ll kill you… I’ll kill you… I’ll kill you…”

The drugs wouldn’t keep him down for long, not with the super soldier serum in him. But it was long enough for the SHIELD agents to restrain him. They checked on Howard, but he waved them off. Steph continued to stare at Bucky, so Howard walked over to her and gently put his hand on her arm.

“Steph,” he said quietly. “You can go. We’ve got this.”

She didn’t even argue. She nodded and tried not to run out of the room. She barely made it around the corner and out of earshot before she stuttered to a halt and leaned heavily against the wall. She wasn’t injured. But she couldn't stay on her feet. She slid down against the wall and felt hot tears stream down her face.

“B-Bucky…” she cried to herself, and then turned to bury her face in her knees as she drew them up to her chest. She hadn’t cried before, not real tears. She had prided herself on the fact that she hadn’t cried, even when she really thought Bucky had been dead.

But this was the thing that broke her. She kept imagining his eyes, filled with hatred. His face held no recognition of her. She didn’t know what Hydra had done to him, because clearly they had done something. Whatever it was, they had taken her Bucky away from her. She never felt so lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do quite like this scene, even though it's so sad. Also, I didn't realize I went so long without a Bucky POV.


	10. Chapter 10

When Bucky drifted back to consciousness, he felt as bad as he did after a night of heavy drinking. Or, at least, that’s what he thought this vaguely hung-over feeling was like. They’d only had a few chances to really get drunk on leave during the war, but he imagined he must have gotten drunk before enlisting, even though he didn’t remember it.

He blinked his eyes open and immediately turned his head away from the ceiling because the light hurt his eyes. That was when he realized his wrists and ankles were cuffed to the bed. The cuffs were made out of some kind of padded canvas and leather. He twisted one hand and immediately cried out in pain. He felt it all the way from his wrist to his shoulder, which continued to throb even after the pain subsided. The action didn’t even do anything because he found the cuff was tightened rather snugly around his wrist. They really weren’t taking any precautions with these things.

“Hello, James.”

Bucky lifted his head at the sound. He recognized the soft British lilt. And sure enough, Director Carter stood in the doorway to the room. She walked around the bed and sat in a chair nearby, far enough away that even if he could move his arms, she would be out of arm’s reach. His eyes did a once-over of the room and found there was no one else there. He didn’t want to admit that maybe he was a little disappointed by that. He dropped his head back down and stared at the ceiling, since it was pointless to try to keep his head raised in this position.

Without looking at Carter, he said, “What’s going on?”

He heard her shift slightly in her chair. Calmy, she asked, “What do you last remember?”

Great. So they were going to play that game. He was starting to get sick of people asking him what he remembered. And he was completely sick of this fucking amnesia. “Stark wanted to take blood and run more tests. I told him no. The bastard has enough. I don’t know what else he needs. And I’m done with being poked and prodded like a god damned lab rat.” He paused as he tried to recall what happened next. Now that he thought about it, his memories were a little fuzzy. “Steph came in and told Stark off. And then…” He frowned and turned his head slightly so he could glance at Carter to gauge her reaction. “I don’t know what happened. How’d I get like this?”

Carter actually sighed. “You don’t remember what you did?”

That didn’t bode well. “No. And where’s Steph? Isn’t she kind of like my unofficial liaison?”

Carter looked at him. “You attacked Captain Rogers,” she said simply.

“What?” He tried to sit up, but the restraints held him down, and caused him to wince again in pain. “What do you mean? When?”

Carter hesitated, and then folded her hands in her lap. “You attacked her when Howard called her Captain America.” She paused and watched Bucky.

For no reason at all, he felt anger bubble under the surface. He heard that name and he wanted to break something, strangle the life out of someone. He took a deep breath and stamped down the feeling. After a moment, it went away, almost like it hadn’t been there at all.

Carter nodded. “Well, it seems like that doesn’t trigger you into a mindless drone any more. But we are going to keep you restrained just in case. Though, according to doctors, you shouldn’t move anyway. Your arm was dislocated, and even if you do heal incredibly quickly, you won’t do yourself any favors by agitating it.”

“What. Happened,” Bucky said slowly, keeping his eyes on Carter.

She tilted her head slightly as she regarded him. “Howard mentioned Steph went through a similar procedure and also has the super soldier serum in her blood.” That sounded familiar. He remembered thinking he should’ve known. And half his anger was that she’d volunteer for what he considered torture, and the other half was at himself for not realizing it sooner. “And then he said she had been Captain America during the war.” This time, only the barest hint of a feeling that he should do  _ something _ when that name was mentioned popped up. He could easily ignore it with no visible reaction. “There seems to have been some kind of trigger implanted into your mind. Based on Howard’s and Steph’s reports, and the video footage, you changed quite suddenly and lashed out at Steph, in an attempt to kill her.”

Bucky swallowed heavily. He licked his lips before starting again. “Is she okay? Did I… Did I…”

“Captain Rogers is fine,” Carter said. “She was surprised, but did not sustain any injuries. She was the one who dislocated your arm. And then Howard’s team was able to subdue you before you were able to do any harm.”

“Can I talk to her?”

Carter sighed and shook her head. “That’s not a good idea. Not until we can determine exactly what was implanted in your mind.”

He strained against the cuffs slightly in another attempt to sit up more, and ignored the pain this time. “But I’m fine now. No crazy kill instinct.”

“It is possible it only comes into effect when Captain Rogers is in the room.” She gracefully pushed herself to her feet. “We want you to have a complete psych eval before you come into contact with Steph again.” She walked over to the bed and gently set her hand on his left shoulder, the uninjured one, pushing him back down. “Don’t worry, James. We just want to make sure Hydra hasn’t done anything else to you. You shouldn’t have to live with the fear of their control.”

He sighed and dropped his head back onto the bed. “So what you’re saying is I should be a good little boy and let Stark and his team run all the tests they want?”

Carter smiled wryly. “Unfortunately. That is the situation Hydra has left us in.”

“Great.”

“We’ll figure this out soon.” She squeezed his shoulder gently, and then she stepped away and turned towards the door.

“Hey,” he said just as she opened the door, which made her pause and turn around. “Can you tell Steph… tell her I’m sorry, okay?”

Carter smiled at him, and maybe it was just his imagination that it seemed to be the saddest, most pained smile. “Of course.” She left before he could say anything else.

 

Steph couldn’t help but think about how their positions had been reversed as she watched Peggy walk out of the hospital room where Bucky was restrained. A few minutes later, Peggy walked into the office.

“I take it you heard, then?”

“Yeah.” Steph frowned at the screen and then turned away to look at Peggy.

“It seems the episode, or trigger state, he had been in has passed.”

Steph nodded. “Now that you’re sure he won’t try to kill everyone, can you please send someone in to actually take care of his arm?” They had, of course, popped it back into place and bandaged it when Bucky was out, but based on the video footage, it was still causing him pain, and probably wasn’t in the best position to heal.

“Of course. I already sent for the doctor before coming over.” As Peggy said that, Steph caught sight of the doctor entering the room. He uncuffed Bucky’s wrists and ankles, and then re-cuffed his left wrist, with what looked like an apology. Then he tested the right shoulder. Steph watched quietly as the doctor peeled back the right side of Bucky’s shirt and inspected the bruising around his shoulder, before rebandaging it and tying his arm to his side tightly in a sling. Steph frowned and crossed her arms. Bucky had just gotten his own room, and now he was back in one of these cell-like hospital rooms.

Peggy didn’t say anything until Steph turned away from the screen again. “What do you think?”

“I think I want to pay Zola a visit and do more than smash his face into his cell bars.”

Peggy smiled sympathetically. “I understand. But that won’t solve any problems.”

“It might make me feel better.” Steph glanced at the screen again.

“Undoubtedly.” Peggy looked at the screen. “Are you certain you don’t want to talk to him?”

“Yes…” Steph sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t want to accidentally trigger anything else. Hydra did all this to hurt me, as Captain America. If they had even known who they lucked on using to do it…” She looked up at Peggy. “They couldn’t have possibly known how important he is to me when they started these tests on him. I was still only doing the USO shows back then.”

Steph walked over to her desk and spread out the pile of papers there. “I went through all the files we collected from that Nazi safe house where we found Bucky, plus the other papers from my “Bucky Clues” folder. I think…” She hesitated and glanced at Peggy. “I think when they were talking about a secret weapon to use against the Americans, they meant Bucky. Here.” She pointed to the paper and Peggy stepped over to the desk to look at it. “It specifically says “against the Americans,” not “against the Allies.” Because this was a weapon to be used against Captain America…”

“It could have worked too…” Peggy said softly.

Steph nodded. “Can you imagine? If Bucky strolled into the London SSR base? I would have gone right up to him and it wouldn’t have taken long for someone to mention Captain America there.” She looked down. “Who knows what else they were planning to put in his head…” She curled her hand into a fist and slammed it onto the table.

“But they didn’t have the chance to do that,” Peggy reminded her. “And he’s here now. We’ll make sure to get rid of whatever damage Hydra has left behind in his mind.”

“Until then, I can’t see him…” Steph turned and leaned against her desk. She crossed her arms and looked at the screen.

Peggy glanced at the screen and then looked at Steph again. “Well, as the head of field missions, you do have other assignments.”

“I know… But I feel bad leaving while this is going on.”

“Yes, but is there anything you could do to help by staying here instead of going on a mission?” Steph looked at her and she arched one eyebrow. “I thought not.”

“I suppose someone has to track down and stop Zodiac and Leviathan.” She pushed herself away from her desk with a sigh. “Will you… keep an eye on him for me?”

“Of course. We’ll figure this out, Steph. I promise.”

Steph smiled sadly. “Thanks…”

 

It didn’t take long for Bucky to start disliking the psychiatrist he had to talk to. But the guy was apparently the best at what he did. And he had the final say on whether the triggers and programming and whatever-the-hells Hydra had left behind in Bucky’s head were gone. So Bucky put up with the bullshit back and forth talking, and after a week felt like he was going crazy. He did recognize this was the opposite of how one was supposed to feel after talking to a shrink.

After a few sessions, and absolutely no crazy episodes, Carter came to talk to him. “How are you doing?” she asked as she stood in the doorway. Unusually, her hair was up in a high ponytail and she wore pants and a T-shirt. He’d only ever see her in a pencil skirt and blouse, so the ensemble threw him for a moment.

“Going a bit stir crazy…” he admitted. He wanted to ask about Steph, but felt like maybe that wasn’t appropriate.

“I thought so.” She nodded her head toward the door, indicating he should walk out with her. “I understand you had been training with Steph. And as I trained her, I thought we could cut out the middle man this time around.” She started to walk out of the room, and he got up to follow her.

“Yeah, but Steph is a super soldier…” he reminded her.

“And she still couldn’t beat me.” Carter glanced back at him as she lead him towards the training room. “If you are worried you might hurt me, you can put that concern aside. You won’t even get close.”

“We’ll see about that…” he mumbled. He glanced up and down the hallway, but no one tried to stop them this time. Where Steph had apparently just pulled him out of his room the first time, Director Carter must have obtained clearance or something.

He paused in the doorway of the training room while Carter continued in. “So, uh… I take it since you’re doing this that I still can’t see or talk to Steph, just in case I try to kill her again?”

Carter turned to look back at him. She cocked her head slightly. “Captain Rogers in currently on a mission. She is actually the head of field missions, but has put aside some of her duties in favor of…”

“Baby-sitting me?”

Carter’s lips quirked slightly, but she didn’t quite smile. “To put it one way. But yes, we are also following Dr. Matthews’ schedule. He does not believe you are ready to come into contact with Steph quite yet.”

“So, obviously they don’t think I’m going to run into Steph if she’s on a mission.” Bucky glanced around. “But they’re not worried I’m going to lose it and try to kill everyone and escape?”

“Are you?” Cart asked calmly, which made Bucky look back at her.

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Then I don’t believe we have to worry about that.” Carter continued into the room and stopped in the center. “Now are you going to continue to ask questions and make excuses, or are you actually going to try to face me?”

Bucky followed her in. “I think you’re probably underestimating me.”

This time Carter actually smirked out right. “We’ll see about that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do love Bucky POV. Even when he still has amnesia.


	11. Chapter 11

It was almost a relief to be back on field missions again. Steph hadn’t realized how much time she’d actually spent at Camp Lehigh. After years of being in the thick of battles on the front lines of the war, stepping back from all of it had been a bit of an adjustment. She still hadn’t managed to return to normal civilian life while she was there, and instead spent most of her time at the base or training. But she couldn’t stay there, not while Bucky was going through his psych evals. So she threw herself back into her missions.

There were still rogue Hydra agents and Nazis to track down. And Leviathan and Zodiac had been causing the SSR and SHIELD quite a bit of trouble. A sure thing that would send them running was the thought of potentially coming up against Captain America.

Steph had a feeling Peggy had asked Dugan to especially keep an eye on her during the missions. He stayed close, and he did seem to always be watching her. But he had always been good about keeping an eye on all his teammates, and always backing her up, no matter what crazy thing she decided to do.

Steph wondered if, once upon a time, that could have been Bucky’s position. If she’d actually found him in that Hydra factory where she found the rest of her original Howling Commandos, she had no doubt he would have joined her. He was certainly good enough, there was no denying that. Maybe that was due to the bastardized super soldier serum he’d be given, or maybe he always was a great soldier. But the thought just made her sad, for the friend she’d lost, who didn’t remember her. And because she didn’t know how to help him.

“ _ Cap _ ,” Dugan’s voice crackled over her radio. “ _ One last Zodiac guy is trying to make a run for it out the south entrance. _ ”

“I’m on it,” Steph said back into her radio. She jumped over the rail of a catwalk and landed on the floor of the factory where they had tracked some underground Zodiac activity. It seemed SHIELD’s sources were good, because the factory had been teeming with people. Between her and the other people on the mission, they’d managed to successfully collect most of the Zodiac agents.

She ran for the back door, that lead out the south entrance, just as she saw a guy in a blue collared jumpsuit appear from a side hallway. With an almighty swing, she threw her shield towards a side wall, so it could ricochet and knock the guy away from the exit. He went sprawling onto his back and groaned loudly. Before he had a chance to get back to his feet, Steph was on him.

Perhaps in recognition of the futility of his situation, he didn’t even try to fight or get away. He let Steph tie his wrists behind his back and hoist him to his feet. “Nice try,” she said. “But you and your pals are going away for a long time.”

“We’ll see about that,  _ Captain America _ ,” he sneered over his shoulder at her. She shoved him a little harder to get him to walk towards where they’re collected the rest of the prisoners. 

“Take them all into custody,” Steph told the rest of her team, and then stepped aside so she could keep an eye on all of them.

Dugan walked over and looked at her, before looking back at the captives. “Well, this all went well. Can’t remember the last time we’d had such a successful mission.”

“Difference between the Army and SHIELD, I guess,” Steph said as she crossed her arms.

“Or the SSR and SHIELD.”

Steph nodded.

There was a pause, and then Dugan said, “So I’m supposed to be making sure you’re okay. Everyone expects you to be shaken up after what happened a couple weeks ago.”

“I’m fine,” Steph said too quickly. So she sighed and shook her head. “I’m okay, really. It wasn’t… Well, yes, it was bad. But I’ve spent the last three years constantly thinking about everything bad that could’ve happened to Bucky. I still did my job then.” She looked at Dugan. “I’m not compromised, if that’s what they’re worried about.”

“They wouldn’t have let you lead a mission if they were worried about you being compromised.”

“And yet here you are, checking on me.”

“Steph, no one’s doubting that you know how to get the job done.” He nodded to the group of Zodiac captives that were being ushered into police vans. “That there’s proof. What they’re worried about, what  _ I’m _ worried about, is the emotional toll, in the long run.” Dugan fully turned to look at Steph. 

Steph sighed again and finally looked at him. She rested her hands on her hips. “I know. I threw everything I had into finding Bucky, and not only does he not remember me, but Hydra did something to his brain so he’d  _ attack _ me. But I’m fine, Dum Dum. I would rather all this, than for him to be dead. Always. And this whole thing, we’re figure it out. We’ll figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it.”

Dugan smiled lightly. “Captain America, ever the optimist.”

Steph found herself smiling in response. “It’s in the job description.”

 

Peggy and Bucky circled each other, eyeing each other for openings to attack. “I hear the sessions are going well,” Peggy said completely calmly, as if they were having a pleasant conversation and not sparring.

“Sure. If by going well, the shrink means I haven’t tried to kill him or anyone else. But they are a pain in the ass.” Bucky watched Peggy pivot on the ball of one foot, and before she got a chance to get a firm stance again, he lunged, swinging at that side.

Peggy ducked around the punch, and then jabbed up at his side, letting herself fall back on her unbalanced foot so she could move away from him again.

Bucky stumbled slightly, but didn’t go down. He quickly spun and blocked the kick Peggy aimed at his head. She didn’t quite smile, but it seemed she was satisfied with his quick movements. Rather than attack again, she skipped back a few steps to get out of his reach. In strength, Bucky had the clear advantage, so she was never going to give him an opportunity to use it.

“You do know they are necessary, James,” she chided him softly.

“I know, I know. So they can clear out all the shit Hydra planted in my head.” Bucky paced back and forth, looking for an opening in Peggy’s very good defense.

“Captain Rogers is pleased with your progress.”

“Yeah?” Bucky said eagerly and straightened up. It hadn’t really occurred to him that Steph would watch his psych sessions. But then again, if she could be, he bet she’d want to be in there with him.

When Bucky dropped his guard at the mention of Steph, Peggy took the opportunity to move forward, jab up at his chin with the heel of her hand, and then sweep his legs out from under him.

He landed on his back hard, but didn’t take the time to recover. Carter wasn’t dumb enough to try to hold him down. He could easily overpower her. Instead, she stood over him with an imaginary pistol. 

“And you’re dead, James,” she said calmly.

He only smirked and swung his legs around to pivot back into a crouch, so he could leap up and grab her wrist, spinning her around to pull her arm behind her back. “You were saying?” he said into her ear.

Peggy laughed. “Alright, alright. Let me go. You win.”

Bucky released her arms and took a step back, but he still had a big smirk on his face when she turned to face him again.

That just made her shake her head. “You still dropped your guard. Perhaps against me, you can still recover. But what if you were fighting someone else like yourself or Steph?”

“Well, as far as we know, Steph as I are the only successful super soldiers still alive.” Apparently Red Skull had been in that camp, but according to Steph and Dum Dum, she’d killed him, or he’d died, or something, back before they found him. He didn’t like to think that the same serum that had turned Schmidt into a monster was also in him.

“As far as we know,” Carter said slowly.

“But Steph’s out there now making sure there aren’t any more hidden bases with people like me, isn’t she?”

“Most of the missions have been focused in the United States,” Carter said.

“Why the change anyway?” Bucky asked and looked at her. “She and Dum Dum’d pretty exclusively been rounding up Hydra after the war, right?”

“I persuaded them to join SHIELD. Finding you was their last mission for the Army and the SSR.”

Bucky eyebrows rose up in surprise. He hadn’t known that. “So, uh, real lucky timing, then.”

“More than you know…” Carter sighed and looked away. He knew there was something she wasn’t telling him, and not just cause of what she said. There was something no one was telling him. He had a feeling it was something about his past that he couldn’t remember.

“Everyone always gets so damn cryptic. What the hell is going on? Whenever I ask about that mission where you and Steph and Dum Dum rescued me, all of you avoid the question.”

Peggy looked at him in surprise, perhaps not expecting the outburst. She bit her lower lip and continued to look at him for a moment, but then she shook her head. “It’s not my place to say. You are going to have to ask Steph.”

“Steph? Are you saying that because I  _ can’t _ ask Steph?”

“No. Really. It concerns her. You are just going to have to wait until you are cleared.”

What a non-answer. So Bucky rolled his eyes and turned away to leave the training room. Fine. As soon as he was cleared as not a threat, he was going to sit Steph down and make her explain everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments! I promise the next few chapters will get really interesting....


	12. Chapter 12

Bucky sat in the doctor’s office and tried to keep from tapping his fingers against his leg. The guy actually had a couch, but every time, Bucky had ignored it and instead opted for a regular chair. He hated this, but it was a toss up whether this was worse than the poking and prodding, especially because he just couldn’t remember anything from before he’d landed in Europe. So half the doctor’s questions had been met with the same answer, “Don’t remember.”

They tried jogging his memory, and triggering any kind of sleeper agent commands every which way. All that lead to were clearer memories of everything Hydra had put him through. Of all the things he’d forgotten, those were memories he would have liked to never regain. The fact that he could remember all that torture and he couldn’t even remember his home was maddening.

But despite all those trials, he’d never had another episode aside from the initial one. They’re tried all kinds of things, from showing him pictures of Captain America propaganda, to images of the nazis, and newsreels. And now there was only one thing left to test. Even though the doctor didn’t say it, they both knew it.

So Bucky fidgeted in his chair as he waited for was what sure to happen. Dr. Matthews just watched Buck quietly for a few moments. “I know all this testing must have been tedious for you, James.”

“That’s one word for it…” Bucky muttered.

And that was another thing. The guy always called him James. He’d gotten used to being called Bucky, between Steph and Dum Dum only referring to him that way. And from what he could remember, he didn’t go by James during the war. Though more often than not, he went by Sergeant or Barnes. He would have much rather the guy called him by his last name than use his given name. It grated on his nerves, for some reason. He was sure there was some childhood thing there, he just couldn’t remember it.

Carter could get away with using his first name because she had a British accent. Calling him Bucky with her accent would have sounded silly. So he didn’t mind that so much. But he didn’t want this random psychiatrist to call him James. Hopefully, though, he wouldn’t have to deal with the guy much longer.

Dr. Matthews smiled like he was amused by Bucky’s comment. “Your behavior seems to be in line with how it was before your episode, and based on reports from people who knew you, in line with how you were before your unit was captured.”

Bucky nodded. “Okay.”

“So there is one last test before I can clear you.” He rose from his seat and walked around the desk to the door to his office. Bucky only barely glanced over his shoulder and heard him say, “You can come in now.”

The door closed and Bucky took a deep breath before turning around completely. It was a good thing too, because the sight before him was enough to take his breath away. Sure, he’d seen the propaganda films and newsreels. But seeing Steph is full Captain America uniform in person was something else. The uniform was all made up of canvas and straps and metal buckles, with a red, white, and blue color scheme. Red and white stripes ran up her stomach, and a big white star was splashed across her chest over a blue background. She really looked like a walking flag. Her helmet dangled from her hand like she was just waiting for the order to put it on. The big round metal shield was strapped to her back. He couldn’t even see the whole thing, but he could tell it was impressive. From the reports he’d seen, Steph was quite something with it. He couldn’t wait to see that himself.

Steph smiled at him tentatively, but otherwise, she didn’t move further into the room. She glanced at the doctor when he said, “Would you mind identifying yourself?”

Steph looked back at Bucky, and held eye contact with him as she said, “Captain Stephany Rogers, AKA Captain America.”

The doctor always watched Bucky, but Bucky ignored him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could tell the guy was writing something down on a notepad.

“Alright. And James, can we get acknowledgement and identification from you?”

“Yeah, I’m still me. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.”

Steph gave him a full smile at that. He realized he hadn’t really seen her smile like that much. She always seemed to have this lingering sadness in her eyes. He couldn’t help but think that he wanted to try harder to make her smile like she was right now.

“Good, good. And for one last thing,” he pointed his pen at Steph, “identify her, yourself.”

Bucky smirked lightly. “Steph Rogers. Captain America,” he said slowly. There was nothing. No anger, no weird instinct. He didn’t black out. He didn’t lose control. He was in the clear. The tension in the air evaporated.

“Very good.” Even Dr. Matthews was smiling. “I am going to turn in my official recommendation that you are cleared psychologically. I am also going to include a recommendation that you be allowed to join active field service, barring a negative medical exam.”

Bucky laughed as he got to his feet. “Hey, Doc, haven’t you heard? I’m a super soldier. I’m not going to get a negative medical exam.”

Dr. Matthews nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Then you should be fine. You are free to go.” He turned to Steph. “Thank you for stopping by, Captain Rogers.”

“I’m happy I could do something to help.” She turned that 1000-watt smile on him again, and he felt himself smiling widely in response.

Bucky followed Steph out of the office. She hesitated like she looked like she wanted to embrace him or something, but then she settled for putting her hand on his shoulder. “I’m happy you’re okay…”

“Yeah, seems Hydra was only able to implant the one thing. Probably why I’ve got amnesia, though.”

Steph shook her head and pulled her hand back. “I’m so sorry that happened to you…” She started to walk with Bucky away from the doctor’s office.

“Well, apparently they weren’t able to do too much. And I was the only one who was actually injured in that fight.”

“How’s your arm, by the way?” Steph glanced at him. “I hope I didn’t do too much damage. I was only trying to incapacitate you.”

Bucky held up his arm and spun it around once to show he had full mobility. “Good as new, thanks to that same serum. It healed fast.”

Steph nodded as she watched him. “Good to see.” She paused and looked ahead of her, and then glanced at him again. “I missed you.”

“Yeah?” He wasn’t really sure what was going on, but he was happy to hear that. “I, uh, I missed you too. You know, talking, and sparring, and stuff.”

“Yes, of course.” Steph smiled lightly and glanced down.

“So, did you get in uniform just to see if it would put me in a homicidal rage?”

“No, I’ve got a mission, actually. We felt this was good timing, since I had to get in full uniform anyway. And that way I’d be equipped to stop you, if you did go off.”

“I like it, by the way. The uniform.”

Steph looked at him, probably trying to tell if he was making fun of her or not. “Really?”

“Yeah. I saw all those USO show propaganda posters. Taking that old show girl uniform and turning it into a combat uniform has something very… poetic about it.”

Steph laughed quietly. “Only you, Bucky…”

That made Bucky frown. “Hey, hang on, Steph.” He put his hand on her arm to stop her, and she turned to look at him curiously. “That’s not the first time you’ve said something like that…” He remembered his earlier conversation with Carter, and this feeling like there was something people weren’t telling him. 

“Like what?” she asked softly.

“Like you know me. But we didn’t meet before I was captured. And you can’t brush this off as Dum Dum and Gabe told you stories about me when you were all buddy-buddy as the Howling Commandos.”

Steph opened her mouth, but then hesitated and chewed on her bottom lip, worrying it between her teeth.

“And why am I so important to you? This whole time, you’ve had a vested interest in my recovery. And don’t say it’s cause you rescued me. That’s bullshit. I can tell there’s more going on here.”

“It’s complicated, Bucky…”

“Then uncomplicate it.”

Steph’s lip quirked in amusement, but then she sighed and put her hands on her hips. “I… Okay. It’s cause… I  _ do _ know you. Or, I did know you.”

Bucky frowned. “When?”

Steph raised her eyes to meet his. “Before the war. We were friends. We grew up together in Brooklyn.” There was a desperation in her face, and it didn’t take a genius to be able to figure out why.

But despite this revelation, there was nothing. No memories came to him. He couldn’t remember Steph at all, not from before the war. He didn’t recognize her. After a moment passed and he didn’t say anything, she looked away, but not before he could see the desperation was replaced by resignation, and the same lingering sadness he had become familiar with.

“You…” He licked his lips and started again. “You knew me? You knew about my past, what my life was like and you didn’t say anything?”

Steph looked at him again and her eyes widened in surprise. “Bucky…”

“I’ve had this god damn amnesia for months now and you’ve let me wander around with no idea about my life before the war? About my family, where I grew up, my  _ past _ . That’s just cruel, Steph.”

“No, no, it wasn’t like that,” she said quickly. “Listen to me.”

A radio at Steph’s hip crackled into life. “ _ Wheels up in five _ ,” a voice said, which made Steph sigh loudly.

She unclipped the radio and held it up so she could say, “Affirmative. I’m on my way.” She dropped her hand, still holding the radio. “Look, I’ve got to go. But when I get back, I promise we can talk. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“You better. You owe me that much after lying to me.”

“I never lied to you! I told you! I never lied.” She stepped closer, but he shook his head and moved away from her.

“Selectively telling the truth  _ is _ lying, Steph! Don’t think you’re so high and mighty because you managed to always answer my questions in roundabout ways that weren’t technically wrong.”

Steph opened her mouth again, but then she looked away. “I’m sorry… I’ll be back in a few days…” She clipped her radio back to her belt and turned swiftly to keep walking down the hall.

Bucky sighed in frustration. He didn’t want Steph mad at him, or upset with him. He didn’t want to be mad at her either, but he couldn’t believe she’d kept him in the dark all this time. Damn, he needed to find something to hit.

 

Steph had a rule. Never talk about anything big right before going into a mission. It was a way to keep from getting distracted during what could be crucial life or death moments. All her Howling Commandos had known and followed her rule. 

She had perhaps broken her own rule by telling Bucky they had grown up together before the war. But, technically, they hadn’t been on their way to a mission. However, that did mean she couldn’t talk to Dum Dum about it while they waited out their long flight across the Atlantic. So instead, she stewed away quietly and cleaned and checked her shield and her gun.

About halfway into the flight, Dugan came and sat down next to her. She was testing the straps and the magnetic clamps that would attach the shield to the straps over her shoulders and on her back. “Hey Cap,” he said conversationally.

“Hey,” she replied without looking up.

“Seems like you’ve got something on your mind.”

Steph stopped what she was doing so she could give him a look.

“Ah, it’s something big, then?”

“Yeah… Something like that…” she mumbled.

“Right. Well, I know you won’t say anything before we start this mission, then. But on the way back, you and me, we’re going to talk. About whatever’s bothering you this time.”

Steph sighed and set the shield down on the floor. “We don’t need to keep talking, Dum Dum.”

“Yes, we apparently do. Because you still have that expression.”

Steph looked at him. “What expression?”

Dugan pointed at her. “Look, I’ve known you for a long time now, Steph. Not as long as you’ve known Bucky, but still several years. When I first met you, you had a different expression on your face. More hopeful, more optimistic. For the first year or two, you really honestly thought we were going to find Bucky alive. And then, at some point, even if you didn’t realize it, you stopped believing that.”

“I didn’t…” Steph started to say, but she knew that wasn’t true. 

“You got this permanently sad look in your eyes. Even when you found Bucky, that hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s gotten worse. So until that goes away, then, yeah. We’re going to talk. Just not before a mission.”

Steph sighed again. “How in the world did you get so observant, Dum Dum?”

“I’m full of talents. We don’t all need super soldier serum to be good.”

Steph smiled wryly. “Fine. We’ll talk. But after the mission.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They don't seem to be moving closer together, do they? I feel like I always want to put "Poor Steph" in these notes.


	13. Chapter 13

Bucky couldn’t stop being angry. In the reasonable part of his brain, the part that wasn’t currently in control, he knew Steph, and everyone else, hadn’t been trying to trick him. Steph’s reason for not telling him she had known him, or filling in his past, clearly wasn’t malicious. But he was still angry, furious. He couldn’t remember  _ anything _ . Even knowing that at one time he had been friends with Steph didn’t stir any memories. No matter how hard he tried, she just wasn’t familiar to him. But maybe if she’d told him about their shared past, he’d remember something.

He was also annoyed at himself. For not remembering. He had a pretty good handle on the war, both from before and after Hydra’s experiments, so it’s not like that was blocking him from remembering. And really, if they had grown up together, he should remember her more than anyone else.

So he spent the time while Steph was away on her mission taking his frustration out on a punching bag. It was comforting to be able to beat the complete shit out of something without worrying about holding back, like he had to while sparring with Steph, and then especially Carter. Though at one point he had done so much damage that the bag split and sand spilled everywhere. So he had to clean that up before he went in search of another punching bag.

After a few days of this, Director Carter found him in the training room, this time with a new punching bag. He didn’t look over as she walked into the room, but instead concentrated on throwing punches. He’d already been at it for a little while, so sweat was making the few longer strands of his hair hang down into his eyes. He had a vague recollection that he’d always cared about how he’d looked, but all that had gone out the window during the war. They hadn’t had that luxury on the front lines. And here, living on this base, or whatever it was now, it wasn’t important to him.

“Hello James,” Peggy greeted him.

Bucky finally paused and caught the bag, which was swaying slightly, so he could glance at her. Surprisingly enough, she wasn’t wearing her normal pencil skirt and blouse, but instead worse loose pants and a tank top, like when they trained. Her hair was also up it its high ponytail. He thought he’d noted the absence of her tell-tale heels clicking on the floor.

“Hey,” he responded after a moment. “I don’t really feel like sparring today.”

“Oh, you would much rather destroy another piece of SHIELD equipment?” she quipped back with an arch of one perfectly shaped eyebrow.

He sighed and moved away from the bag. “You heard about that?”

“James, I am a Director of SHIELD. Of course I heard about how you destroyed a punching bag. And you have spurred Howard to design a punching bag strong enough to take a beating from super soldiers. Because it would only be a matter of time before Steph did the same thing.”

Unexpectedly, Bucky grunted when Peggy mentioned Steph’s name. He didn’t mean to, but he was so damn frustrated by the whole situation, especially because he didn’t really have a reason to be angry at Steph.

Peggy tapped her finger against her chin as she watched him, having not missed his grunt. “Come. Leave this bag intact for a moment. I have been doing office work all day, anyway.  _ I _ need a chance to stretch. And you super soldiers are the only ones who can keep up.”

So Bucky let Carter steer him away from the punching bag and onto the sparring mat. As expected, it did not take her long to send him sprawling to the mat. He was too angry to really concentrate. And he didn’t want to accidentally take his anger out on her, so he stayed a step behind.

“Something surely is bothering you,” she commented after the next time she flipped him over her head.

Bucky groaned and propped himself up before pushing himself to his feet again. “I’m fine,” he lied.

“Oh yes, I can tell,” Peggy said sarcastically as she dodged around a punch he threw.

He actually managed to catch her on the next hit, and it took him by surprise so much that she was able to squirm free. She held up her hand to call for a break, so he straightened up and wiped his face on his shirt sleeve.

Carter tilted her head as she looked at him. “I find it curious, actually.”

“What?” he asked as he looked at her again.

“I received the final report from Dr. Matthews. He cleared you to associate with others, and particularly Captain Rogers, again. He even cleared you to return to active duty, if you want it. And yet I find you in here, angrier than when you thought Hydra still had control over your mind.”

“Look, it’s not…” he started to say.

“So I have to ask, what has you this upset, when quite honestly, you should be celebrating?”

“Because I did get a chance to talk to Steph before she left on this mission,” he blurted out.

Carter frowned. “You didn’t attack her again. I would have heard.”

“No, I didn’t,” he confirmed. “We just talked. But she said…” He sighed and crossed his arms. “She said she’d known me before the war. That we’d been friends, grown up together, or something like that.”

Peggy looked at him levelly. Both her eyebrows rose up toward her hairline. So he could only assume she did know that piece of information, but was surprised Steph had said anything. “Really?” She wetted her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Did she say anything else?”

He shook his head. “She kinda was on her way out for this mission.”

“And you are angry specifically, because…?” Peggy propped her hands on her hips as she looked at him.

“Because she lied to me!” he yelled and took a step towards her. “All of you did. Did you really all know?”

“Yes,” Carter said immediately, without trying to get around the question. “I knew before she even went to the factory where she rescued the other Howling Commandos.”

“And none of you said anything! Not you, not Dum Dum, not Stark!”

“It wasn’t up to me,” Peggy said calmly. “It was Steph’s past and her relationship. If she didn’t want to tell you, I was going to respect her wishes. Dugan felt the same.”

“So then you’re blaming Steph?”

“I didn’t say that.” Peggy sighed and shook her head. “Look, James, she wasn’t trying to hide your shared past from you.”

“Oh yeah. Then why the hell would she keep that from me?” He was right up in Carter’s face by now. He’d been simmering with this anger for days, and Steph wasn’t here for him to yell at. So Peggy was her proxy. “I don’t remember anything! She could’ve told me about what I was like before, and what I did! About my family, or Brooklyn, or anything. Do you have any idea what it’s like to live in this haze where you can’t even remember who you are? Because some fucking Nazis screwed with your brain?!”

Carter looked up at him calmly, and for her part, did not back down at all. She was quite used to angry men towering over her, and she was perfectly capable of handling herself. “I am sure Steph will say the reason she didn’t tell you anything was because she didn’t want to confuse your actual memories with her version of events. She was hoping you would remember on your own.”

“If she’d told me something, though, it could help me remember. It could give me some clue to latch onto. Whereas, I’ve had nothing!”

“I said that’s the reason Steph would give.”

“So there’s a real reason?”

“Yes. And I doubt she would easily admit to it.” Peggy sighed again. “While it might have started as an attempt to let you remember on your own, at your own pace, by now it’s become too painful for her to say anything.”

That made his anger drop significantly. He could be angry at Steph, but he didn’t want to hurt her. He never wanted to hurt her. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it, James. Think about it from her point of view, what this must be like for her. You were her best friend before the war. When she saw your name on the list of the captured or presumed dead, she immediately accepted the mission to infiltrate that Hydra factory without any concern for her own safety or how difficult it would be.”

Carter paused and Bucky glanced away. Somehow, that didn’t surprise him, from what he had gathered about Steph in the months he’d gotten to know her. She seemed loyal to a fault.

“She thought she’d lost her… best friend.” Bucky glanced at her curiously at the way she hesitated slightly around the words. “And then when she found you, you didn’t remember anything. And when you finally did remember something, it wasn’t her, it was other people. And here she was, arguably, the person you should have first remembered.”

“I don’t exactly have control over…”

“I know. And I’m not saying it is your fault, James. And she doesn’t blame you either. But Dugan and I, we’ve spent a lot of time working with Steph. We’ve watched her slowly lose hope. So I am sure that at some point, what began as an innocent decision to let you remember on your own turned into a defense mechanism to avoid anymore pain. Because it would be too hard to tell you everything when you couldn’t remember her.”

Bucky turned away. “Damn.”

Peggy smiled in amusement. “Let me guess. I have taken apart your excuse to be angry with Steph.”

“Yeah.” Bucky ran his fingers through his hair, pushing his bangs out of his face.

“Talk to her when she returns. But don’t be too hard on her.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. But then he glanced back at her and smiled lightly. “So is this really why you’re a director of SHIELD instead of just another field agent? The whole diplomacy thing?”

Peggy smiled as well. “Howard certainly isn’t the diplomatic one.”

That made Bucky chuckle. “No kidding. But I guess I’ve got to thank him, and you, all of you, for helping me out through all this.”

“You are very welcome.” She took a step or two back. “It was the least we could do after everything you’d been through while serving your country. So does that mean you will consider joining SHIELD as a field agent?”

“I’m thinking about it,” he said.

Peggy smiled. “Good. Now come on, that is enough of a break, I believe.”

Bucky smirked. “You are not going to win this round, Carter.”

“Oh, we shall see about that, Barnes.” She let him make the first move so she could dart around it and jab quickly at his side.

He grunted slightly, but spun around to try to knock her back, only she hadn’t stayed in one spot long enough for him to get the hit in. She was already around on the other side of him. But this time, her hit didn’t connect, because he was able to block with his forearm.

They exchanged blows, never making any headway against each other, but Bucky was doing significantly better than he had been earlier. And then he got the upper hand. He was able to hook his foot around her ankle and send her down onto her back, where he pinned her down.

Carter struggled a bit, but then discovered she was well and truly caught. She looked up into Bucky’s face, which was hovering only a few inches above hers because he held his arm at her throat, and had her arm pinned with his other hand. They were both breathing hard, and they looked at each perhaps a moment longer than was necessary.

A little late, Bucky finally got off Peggy and awkwardly held out his hand to help her up. He also didn’t immediately let go of her hand when she was on her feet again.

“James…” she started to say quietly as he moved closer.

But he cut her off as he touched the side of her neck and leaned in to kiss her. She didn’t push him away, and she did in fact respond to the kiss.

When he went in for a second kiss, however, she gently put her hand on his chest to stop him. “Not that I would normally be uninterested…” she mumbled. “But I believe you are going after me because there is no emotional attachment. Attraction, yes. But if I reject you, it isn’t going to destroy you.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he mumbled.

She gazed up at him. “There is someone else you should be kissing.” She didn’t explain further and she stepped out of his arms. “But I’m not going to say I didn’t enjoy that.” She smirked. “I will see you later, James.” And then she walked off, leaving Bucky confused.

 

Steph titled the bottle of amber liquid back and forth, and then splashed another shot into the glass sitting in front of her on the bar. She carefully set the bottle back down and gingerly picked up the glass to sip from it again. The stuff burned the whole way down, and while she thought she was finally beginning to feel something, she definitely wasn’t getting drunk. Which meant she clearly could remember what she’d almost walked in on.

On the way back from the mission, which had been very successful, she’d told Dugan about what had happened right before she left. The withering I-told-you-so look he gave her was almost too unbearable to look at. He’d always thought she should’ve just told Bucky everything, especially after having apparently constantly listened to Bucky talk about her in the war without doing anything. Reasonably, the fact she’d never just talked to Bucky about how she felt was why they hadn’t gotten together before the war.

She didn’t want to tell the guy that he was supposed to be in love with her. But she had decided that, at the very least, now that he knew they’d been friends, she’d tell him she was in love with him, and had been for a while. She’d let the chips falls where they would from there.

At least, that had been the plan.

She’d gone looking for Bucky as soon as they got back, to fulfill her promise to talk to him. She hadn’t even bothered to change out of her uniform first. She heard Peggy and Bucky were sparring in the training room so she went to find them there, since she needed to tell Peggy about the enemy operative they’d captured on their mission.

Maybe it would have turned out differently if the training room door hadn’t been open. She would have had to open it and alert them to her presence. But it was open. And before she even stepped into the room, she stopped dead in her tracks. Because what she saw was Peggy and Bucky kissing. They didn’t hear her, and she crept back soundlessly before they had a chance to.

The ironic thing was it wasn’t the first time she’d walked in on Bucky making out with some girl. In fact, she couldn’t even count the number of times she’d caught Bucky with some other girl. It always stung, but she’d gotten so used to it that she’d learned how to swallow the ache and ignore the pain.

She couldn’t even blame either of them. Peggy was very beautiful, anyone could see that. So it was completely reasonable that Bucky would go after her. She wasn’t even mad at Peggy. It wasn’t like Steph had ever acted on her feelings, and Bucky was, well, Bucky Barnes, even if he didn’t remember most of what that meant.

So instead, she changed out of her uniform into civilian clothes, and came to the local bar. A lot of the Army and SHIELD personnel came here on their down time since it was so close to the base. She’d been a few times with Dugan, but never by herself. Turned out, it was a pointless endeavor. Thanks to the serum, she couldn’t get drunk. But that didn’t stop her from drinking glass after glass.

“So I hear Captain America is drinking,” someone said as they took the bar stool next to her. Steph glanced over to see it was Dugan. “And I think, that can’t be right. Steph doesn’t drink much, if at all. Must be mistaken. But sure enough, here you are.”

“What do you want, Dum Dum?” Steph asked. Her voice was raw, and that wasn’t from the alcohol.

Dugan picked up the bottle and looked at it. “Captain America is sitting in a bar alone, drinking whiskey. Now I’ve seen everything.” He leaned forward so he could reach behind the bar and grab another glass. Then he poured himself a healthy amount of whiskey. 

Steph straightened up and watched him. “Did you think you needed to check up on me?”

“No.” He looked at the bottle again. “You been drinking this much by yourself?”

“Yeah,” she said without shame.

“Most people wouldn’t be able to sit straight after this much whiskey.”

“I’m not most people, if case you've forgotten.” Steph turned back to the bar and took her bottle back as she had finished off her glass.

“Kinda impossible to forget that.” 

“Turns out, I can’t get drunk,” she said. “My metabolism burns too fast.”

“What a problem to have.”

“Well maybe I would like to be able to just get drunk for once,” Steph said.

He looked at her from over the rim of his glass as he took a sip. “And why would you like to be able to get drunk this time?”

Steph quietly sipped her own drink without responding.

“Steph, we both know you’re going to tell me what’s going on eventually. So you might as well.”

Steph carefully set her glass on the bartop with a click. She looked down into the amber liquid for a moment and then said, “I saw Bucky and Peggy kissing.”

“Damn,” Dugan said in surprise.

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly…”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything. They didn’t even notice me. So I got out of there as fast as I could.”

Dugan groaned in annoyance.

“What?” She rounded on him angrily. “What, Dum Dum? What should I have done? Said, “Hey, hey, what do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be in love with  _ me _ ?”” She put her hand flat on her chest with her fingers splayed.

“Well, maybe at least said something.”

Steph shook her head and turned back to the bar. “No. What would be the point? If he wants to go after Peggy, let him.” She clenched her hand around the glass and a crack appeared on the lip, so she quickly let it go.

Dugan dropped his eyes to the glass and then looked at her again. “You should tell him.”

“No.”

“Steph.”

“ _ No _ .” She glanced at him again. “Just, no. I can’t tell him that if he remembered he’d know he’s supposed to be in love with me, or that he’d told you as he was being dragged off that he loved me.” She looked down at the bar and then picked up her glass to swish around the liquid inside. “I can’t do that to him. You can’t tell someone who they’re supposed to love. If he remembered, that would be one thing. But he doesn’t. And clearly he doesn’t still love me without knowing about our past.”

“Then you should tell him you love him.”

Steph shook her head again, all the fire gone out of her. “It’s all based on our shared experiences. It wouldn’t mean anything to him. I’m just… I’m just another soldier, the same faceless Captain America everyone else sees.” She sipped from the uncracked side of her glass. “I never did really save my Bucky from Hydra. They got him in the end…”

Dugan looked at her. “I’m sorry, Steph…”

“Yeah, me too…” she mumbled.

They were quiet for a moment after that, and both silently drank from their glasses, refilling as necessary. 

“It was never gonna be me,” she said at last. “I should’ve known. I was never going to get him.” Her eyes drifted up to the ceiling. “All those years I could’ve said something… But I just… couldn’t. Not while watching him go after every skirt in Brooklyn. Bucky never looked twice at me. So I should’ve known better than to get my hopes up.”

“Steph, listen to me,” Dugan said calmly. He put his hand on her shoulder and turned her so she would face him. “That boy loved you. So much so that when he thought he was going to die, the one thing he wanted to make sure was communicated home was the fact he loved you.”

Even before Dugan finished speaking, Steph was shaking her head. “You’re wrong. He must’ve… must’ve been talking about someone else.”

“ _ Steph Rogers _ . He said go to Brooklyn, find Steph Rogers.”

“Then he was lying. I don’t know!” She slammed her glass down. “Maybe he really did know all along, and that’s why he was always with every other girl, to prove he’d never be interested in some scrawny, sickly thing like me. And he said that cause he wouldn’t have to follow through. He could hit me where it hurt the most.”

Dugan watched her and waited for her to finish. “Do you really think the Bucky you knew, and the Bucky I fought alongside, would ever do something as cruel as all that?”

Steph opened her mouth, but then she closed it and turned away. “I don’t know. No.” She sighed. “But it was never me… God, I loved him so much, and he never looked at me, no matter how close we were as friends…” She ran her hand through her hair.

“He loved you. And I will continue to swear to that.”

“What good does that do now?” She finished off her glass again. “He doesn’t remember anything about me, about us… Or even about what he said to you during the war. It’s like it never happened…” She picked up the bottle and turned it over to pour more whiskey into her glass, but only a drop plopped out. The bottle was empty.

She held it like that for a moment and then turned it so she could look down the neck. She carefully set it back on the bartop. She hadn't even realized they’d finished the whole bottle off. “You know, I prayed for this…” she said, so quietly that it was almost a whisper.

“For what?” Dugan asked.

“When… When I was in the factory, after I’d set you guys free, and Monty directed me to the isolation ward. When I found it empty, for a minute there, that was when I first really believed Bucky was dead… I was devastated. So I thought,  _ let him never look twice at me. Let him hate me, just dear god, let him be alive. _ ” Steph looked down into her empty glass.

“He doesn’t hate you.”

“You didn’t see how angry he was when he found out we’d known each other before the war…”

“He still doesn’t hate you.”

Steph shrugged one shoulder. “I got what I wished for. Bucky was still alive. But he… he doesn’t remember anything about me. Like the parts of his memory relating to me were specifically erased.”

“He could still remember.”

“Yeah, maybe… But at this point, it seems unlikely.” She pushed herself away from the bar and stood up.

She turned to leave, but Dum Dum said, “Steph.”

She glanced back at him and smiled weakly. “I’ll be okay, Dum Dum. Just… give me a day or so, and I’ll be back to how I was before this all got started. I just have to accept my Bucky is really gone.” She didn’t let him say anything else, because she turned for the door and walked out of the bar, leaving him sitting there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's always darkest before the dawn. And the dawn is still a long way off.
> 
> Though, to be honest, this scene really breaks _my_ heart.


	14. Chapter 14

Bucky wasn’t sure how, but word got round SHIELD about him and Peggy. He knew it sure as hell hadn’t been Carter, because she wasn’t the kind to kiss and tell. Then again, they hadn’t exactly been secretive. They’d been standing out in the open. All it would take was for someone to watch the security footage from the training room, and then to tell everyone. Regardless of how, it seemed like everyone at SHIELD now knew.

Carter played it off classy as ever, by straight-out refusing to answer or acknowledge any questions of those sort, and instead assigning more menial paperwork to anyone who tried to ask about her personal life.

Bucky didn’t get many questions, however. But people did give him these mistrustful, side-eyed glances. Like he’d broken some unspoken taboo by kissing Director Carter. He had much less tact when questioned directly, and would tell people it was none of their damn business. He wasn’t married, as far as he knew, so it wasn’t like he’d done anything wrong.

But even Dugan shook his head when he saw Bucky again, and said, “You messed up, pal.” But he refused to say how exactly Bucky had messed up.

And Steph, well, for her part, she was avoiding him. Or at least, that’s what it seemed like. Bucky knew Steph was busy, and there was something big about the mission she’d just returned from. But he hadn’t caught sight of her once since she returned, even when he went looking. She had promised to talk to him about their past, after all.

He stopped in front of the door to her office and hesitated for a second before knocking. There was no answer. He worried he hadn’t knocked loud enough, so he knocked again, harder this time. There was still no answer. He tested the door and found it unlocked, but the office was empty.

“Damn…” he sighed to himself and leaned against the doorframe. 

“Are you looking for Captain Rogers?” someone asked from behind him.

Bucky turned to see one of the SHIELD office workers standing there. The guy looked young, and not at all like the kind of person cut out to be in the army. Maybe that was why he was in SHIELD instead. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Know where she is?”

“Interrogation,” the kid said and he shifted his stack of files to his other arm. “But I think Director Stark wants to talk to you. He’s there too.”

“Thanks,” Bucky said. He stepped around the guy and headed towards the interrogation rooms. He had no idea why Stark would want to talk to him, but it probably wasn’t going to be a very fun conversation. He just hoped it didn’t have anything to do with him kissing the other director of SHIELD. Howard Stark couldn’t very well chastise him when he was himself a notorious playboy.

But when he got to the interrogation room, he found both Stark and Carter standing on one side of the two-way mirror separating them from Steph and Dum Dum on the other side. Dum Dum lurked on the other side of the room while Steph sat at the table across from a blonde woman. The woman’s hands were cuffed to a metal loop on the table, but she still looked like she was the one in complete control of the situation. She wore a black catsuit and her eyes flashed dangerously. 

“Yelena,” Steph said calmly, “we know who you’re working for. And you should know it is not you we want, but them.”

The blonde woman, Yelena, watched Steph, but didn’t say anything.

“They would just as easily let you rot here or see you killed. If you tell us what they’re planning, we can make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Yelena sneared. “Captain America.” She said the name like it was an insult, a dirty word. And she had a thick accent, something Eastern European. Russian, maybe? “You Americans…” She glanced back at Dum Dum, and then she looked at the glass. She shouldn’t have been able to see Stark and Carter standing there, but it sure as hell seemed like it to Bucky.

“What is this?” He asked as he turned toward the two directors.

Stark has his hands in his pants pockets and seemed pretty relaxed for watching an interrogation. Peggy, however, had her arms crossed and her lips pursed. So it was Stark that answered him. “Rogers and Dugan picked her up on their last mission. Apparently she tried to kill them on behalf of Leviathan. But we have no idea where she comes from. She’s not like any Zodiac or Leviathan agent we’ve picked up so far.”

“She’s well trained, and extremely deadly,” Carter said. “It was only luck she singled out Steph to go after, because if she had gone after one of the other men first, they would be dead.”

Bucky’s heart clenched in concern and he quickly looked through the window again to run his eyes over Steph’s form. She didn’t seem injured at all. 

As if reading his thoughts, Peggy said, “Steph came out of it alright and managed to subdue her. We’ve gotten some basic information out of her, but not much else.”

“But it seems like Leviathan is working with the Russians.” Stark frowned, but didn’t move his hands from his pockets. “Which, obviously, is not great.”

Bucky looked at him, and then looked back into the interrogation room. He’d read up more about the war during his recovery time. They’d even let him read SSR files, so he was sure he knew more about the war than most civilians, and even than most soldiers. He knew how potentially bad it was that Russia was moving against them. “So what are you going to do?” he asked at last.

“Steph and Dugan are going back out. If they sent some crazy assassin lady after Captain America, it means we were close to uncovering something. I, for one, want to know what. But it’s probably more dangerous than the average Leviathan-related mission. So I want you to go with them.”

“What?” Bucky rounded on them again.

“Howard?” Even Carter seemed surprised. She turned to Stark with a curious expression on her face. “That’s Steph’s call. She gets to pick her own teams, that’s one of the things you agreed to.” She almost sounded like she was chastising a toddler. Only after he got past that thought did Bucky realize Peggy was implying Steph  _ wouldn’t _ want him on her team.

Stark waved his hand to wave off the comment. “Yeah, she gets to choose. But I still get to make recommendations. And Steph’s not petty enough to disagree with an obvious tactical choice.” Stark gave Peggy a very pointed look.

Bucky rolled his eyes and just barely managed to keep from groaning. Good God, everyone knew he’d kissed Carter, even Stark and—he could only assume—Steph.

“Yes, but you want to send him on an arguably very dangerous mission as his first assignment. He hasn’t been field-tested yet.”

“Neither had Steph, and she had  _ no _ training. Remember the first thing she did upon becoming a super soldier?”

“That’s different. That wasn’t a mission. She went after that spy on her own.”

“And she caught him! But what about her first actual mission? That was plenty dangerous enough. He’s got the super soldier serum. He’s been cleared mentally and physically for field missions. And this one needs another super soldier.”

“Oy,” Bucky said when he could get a word in edgewise. “Do I get a say in any of this?”

Both Carter and Stark looked at him. Stark lifted one eyebrow and smiled wryly. “You saying you’re turning down the offer?”

“Well, no…” Bucky said slowly. “I do want to be a field agent. And I’ll go on this mission, if I’m needed, but…”

“But?” Stark asked. He looked like he knew exactly what was bothering Bucky. The bastard. 

“Well…”

“She’s not talking,” Steph said from behind them. Bucky turned to see her and Dum Dum standing in the open doorway. The three of them hadn’t even noticed the interrogation had ended. Steph’s eyes got hard when she saw Bucky standing there. Crap. And he was the one who was supposed to be angry at her.

She walked past Bucky without acknowledging him and over to Stark. “But I do think it’s a good idea to go back out. I want to leave tonight, before the trail goes cold.”

Stark nodded. “Great. I’ll put together the flight plan. Pick three agents to go with you.”

“Three?” Steph asked. “Last time I had four, aside from Dugan and I.”

“Barnes is also going, he’s your fourth.”

Steph opened her mouth like she was going to question it, but she glanced at him and briefly met his eyes. She looked away again quickly, but not before Bucky could see the shame there. Okay, so anger and shame? What was that about? Was it for not following through on her promise to talk to him?

“You need someone else with enhanced strength in case you run into another operative like her.” Stark nodded his head towards the window. They could see the blonde woman still chained to the table.

“Yes, fine.” She looked at Bucky again, and this time her expression was blank. That was even worse than having her look at him with pained eyes. “Find yourself some gear.” She paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. “I heard you were a pretty good shot.” She glanced at Dum Dum, who nodded. “Grab a sniper rifle too.” She didn’t say anything else, and turned on her heel to leave the room.

Dugan smiled at him weakly and squeezed his shoulder. “It’ll be good to be fighting side-by-side again. Try not to die.”

“Don’t plan on it…” he said quietly as he watched Steph walk away. He never would have thought she was a cold person. Even though she had clearly been saddened by the fact he hadn’t remembered her at all, she was always kind. But she had treated him like they’d never even spoken before. Did he really piss her off that bad between yelling at her and kissing Carter?

 

Steph didn’t know what she was going to do. She wanted to be annoyed at Stark for essentially pulling rank on her. He hadn't even offered her the option of deciding if Bucky should come on the mission or not. The really obnoxious part was that he was right and having Bucky along would be an asset.

But she hadn’t decided how to act around him yet. That’s why she had avoided him. Honestly, she really did owe him an explanation, both for why she hadn’t told him about their past, and just about their past in general. She sure as hell wasn’t going to say she was in love with him, not when she’d caught him making out with Peggy. Peggy had very firmly stated nothing was going on between them, that it’d been one little kiss, but still…

It had been a long time since she’d had to deal with talking to Bucky after watching him be with someone else. She’d fallen out of practice. In the past, sometimes she could just tease him about it, or roll her eyes, or melt into the background. But she wasn’t that person anymore. Somehow, that just made it harder. Who thought she’d ever miss being the weak little girl who everyone ignored?

Steph sighed and lifted her shield into her lap. She polished it after each mission, and Stark usually took a look at it, though it was unnecessary. The thing was made of vibranium. It was damn near unbreakable. Though, with Steph’s luck, she was sure she’d find something that eventually would do the trick. Something worse than the Red Skull’s tesseract.

She smoothed her hand over the surface and could see herself reflected there. God, she looked tired. She was a super soldier, and not even thirty years old. And she looked tired of all this. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and looked up just as Bucky sat down next to her.

“Hey…” he said cautiously. Well, at the very least, he didn’t seem to be angry with her anymore. So what the hell was she supposed to do?

“Hello,” she said slowly. She couldn’t very well start something while they were en route to a mission.

He cleared his throat and his eyes flickered to the front of the aircraft, and back to her face. “So, we’ve got a couple hours til we reach our destination. So I was wondering if we could talk…”

Maybe he couldn’t remember it, but he sounded just like Brooklyn. He sounded like home. Steph closed her eyes. “No.”

“No?” he asked in confusion.

She opened her eyes again so she could look at him. “I’ve got this rule about field missions. Set it up at some point during the war with the Howling Commandos, and I’ve just decided to stick to it. No talking about anything big or potentially distracting before a big mission. We can talk about the mission, and that’s it.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “Really? Seems kind of… uptight.”

She found herself scowling at him without meaning to. “It was because we were going into life or death situations where the odds were more often than not stacked against us. We couldn’t afford to give anything less than 100% to the task at hand. And you know what? I never lost a Commando. So if you want to come in here and tell me I’m a bad Captain—”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Bucky held up his hands in a placating gesture. “I never said anything about that. And I’m not saying it’s a  _ bad _ idea. I guess it makes sense. So, fine, yeah. No talking about anything but the mission beforehand. Sorry.”

Steph’s face relaxed and she sighed. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I snapped…” She expected Bucky to get up and leave her alone, but instead he dropped his hands between his knees and looked down at the floor.

“You must’ve had a hard time getting people to believe in you during the war.” He glanced at her. “But you wouldn’t be Captain America for nothing. And I read the reports. I trust your judgment.”

Steph glanced at him, and then huffed out a breath in exasperation, before smiling softly. “Well, that’s enough of that. Do you have any mission questions for me, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Yeah.” He turned his head to look at her. “You sure you want me in sniper position?”

“Yes, I think it’s what you’re most suited for.”

“I wasn’t actually trained as a sniper. I was a regular soldier during the war.”

“With a high marksmanship score. Same as on the shooting range at SHIELD. Dum Dum vouches for you.”

He frowned like he didn’t quite believe her. “Just don’t want to be a liability…”

“You won’t be. I trust you.”

He smiled crookedly at that, but didn’t say anything else.

 

When they reached the factory again, it was no surprise to see the place had been mostly cleared out. That woman was a smoke-screen just as much as an attempted assassin. So now Bucky was positioned on the roof, near a skylight, just in case an unexpected guest tried to join the party again. They were all on radio-silence until they determined if an enemy was present. But so far, the place seemed empty.

“Whatever Leviathan was doing here, all of it’s long gone,” Dugan said as he walked up to her. His eyes kept sweeping the area.

“Agreed,” Steph said quietly. She nudged a fallen filing cabinet, only to discover there was nothing in it. “I still think there was another reason they wanted us out of here. Yeah, to clear the place out, but there must be something we’re missing…”

They met back in the center of the main floor with the other three. “All clear, on our end.”

“Us too,” Steph said. She pulled out her radio. “We’re all clear down here. What’s the view from up top, Barnes?”

“ _ All quiet up here too, _ ” Bucky’s voice crackled over the radio. “ _ Maybe it’s just that the last time I was over here was a war, but it almost seems unnaturally so. _ ”

“Hmm…” Steph tapped her finger against her radio. “There’s got to be something else… They couldn’t want us out of here that badly just for files…” She looked around the large area again and a thought occurred to her. “Check again. Look for things out of place. An oddly positioned section of walling, something like that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the other three said, and then went off to follow her directions.

“What are we looking for, Cap?” Dugan asked.

“Something hidden,” Steph said. She went to the closest wall and started running her gloved fingers over it. Leviathan and Zodiac had their share of secret stashes. But really, she’d been thinking of the Hydra facility where she’d found Bucky. That had a whole secret, underground room.

“ _ There are no birds… _ ” Bucky’s voice crackled over the radio. “ _ That’s why it’s so quiet. _ ”

“You okay up there, Buck?” she said into the radio. She shouldn’t be that familiar with him on a mission, where everyone else could hear them.

“ _ Yeah, fine. Just making an observation. _ ”

“Stay focused, Barnes.” 

She clipped her radio back to her belt just as she heard a tart “ _ Yes, ma’am, _ ” in response. She met Dugan’s eyes, and he smirked, amused.

“ _ Hey, actually, wait a minute, Steph. Captain, shit. Whatever. I just noticed something. You’re on the ground floor. There’s a column of windows from the roof down to you. _ ”

“Yes, and?” Steph prompted into the radio. There were columns of windows positioned around the factory, each had three windows.

“ _ How many do you see? _ ”

“Three? Why?”

“ _ Cause I’m looking over the side of the building, and I see four. _ ”

Steph looked at Dugan, who raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed.

“ _ And the fourth one, closest to the ground, is a lot smaller, like a basement window. _ ”

“We saw no basement entrances in this place.”

“ _ That window goes somewhere. Want me to drop down and take a look? _ ”

“Negative. I need you up top. Where is it on the wall?” Steph’s eyes scanned the whole wall, looking for an area that could have a basement carved under it.

“ _ Middle column of windows on the South wall. That’s the only one with a fourth window under it. _ ”

Steph and Dugan jogged down the wall until they got to the mid-way point. Right at the base of the wall, a large machine covered the floor. It almost looked like some kind of industrial loom, impossible for anyone to move.

“Well, if this thing is blocking the entrance, there’s no way we’re getting in,” Dugan said in frustration.

“They couldn’t have moved this thing here since we left… Look at the dust around it.” Steph walked around the large machine, and then she smirked. One lever on the side had noticeably less dust on it than the rest of the thing. She pushed down on it, and a hidden panel dropped out beneath the loom, revealing stairs that lead down into darkness. Steph smirked and said into the radio, “Thanks, Bucky.”

“ _ No problem. _ ”

“Okay, Dugan and I found a lower level. We’re going to investigate. The rest of you, maintain your positions. Alert me if anything is out of the ordinary.”

She got affirmatives over the radio, and then she lead the way down the steps with her shield raised in one hand and a small flashlight in the other.

“Secret underground lairs. This feels like the war again,” Dugan said as he followed her.

“That’s what I’m afraid of…” Steph mumbled. The stairs went down three flights. The fourth window Bucky had seen illuminated the first set of stairs, but after that, it was pure darkness. When they reached the bottom, Steph shined the light around, and then found a switch. She flipped it and her heart dropped into her stomach.

“Oh, hell…” Dugan muttered.

Across the floor of dangerous looking lab equipment with surely nasty purposes and deadly machinery, emblazoned on the wall was a large emblem of a skull with tentacles. This was an old Hydra facility.

Steph tore her eyes away from it and wandered around the equipment. “This place has been used. Very recently.”

“So they found some old Hydra stuff?”

“Or worse.” This was all for human experimentation. They had been doing to other people what they’d done to Bucky. This could even have been one of the places where he…

“What’s worse?”

“ _ Shit. Get back up to ground level. We’ve got company. _ ”

Steph and Dugan looked at each other, and then they ran to the stairs. They came out of the secret entrance, right into a firefight. Her other three agents were pinned down across the factory by at least a dozen men who were blocking their exit. As she watched, one of them dropped. She glanced up to see Bucky at the skylight, overlooking the factory floor, picking them off.

So she did what Captain America did best. She jumped right into the fight, with Dugan close on her heels. The attackers were so focused on her men, that they seemed quite surprised when a red, white, and blue shield suddenly slammed them in the face.

With the chaos Steph and Dugan created, and Bucky sniping from above, the other SHIELD agents were able to get out from under cover and even up the fight. It was a short skirmish, that left their attackers dead or unconscious. Whoever sent them probably thought outnumbering them two to one would be enough. They were very wrong.

Steph used the tip of her boot to flip one of the dead ones over onto his back. They were all wearing black gear from head to toe. So she hadn’t noticed right away. The symbol of the dead man’s chest was black on black, after all. But it was clear. These men were Hydra.

“Damnit…” she muttered. “Damnit all to hell…”

She turned to check on the rest of her team just in time to see one last Hydra agent they had missed sneak through the doorway and point his gun at her head. Her shield was on the floor somewhere, and she barely had the thought to try to futilely duck as a loud crack rang through the factory. But it was the Hydra agent who dropped to the ground.

Steph blinked, still recovering from the moment. She looked up just in time to see Bucky unload the spent shell from his rifle. The side of her mouth quirked in a smile and she raised her hand to give him a casual salute. He nodded back in response. Maybe she would have been okay. But chances were pretty good Bucky had just saved her life.

“Any more?” she asked into the radio.

“ _ We’re clear here, _ ” the other SHIELD agents said.

“ _ That was the last of them, _ ” Bucky said from the roof.

“Then I’m going to radio Stark for cleanup. We need to examine that equipment they’ve got stored under this place.” She paused. “And we need to inform him that Levithan has another ally. And it’s Hydra.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, stuff! Isn't it fun to have them working together again?


	15. Chapter 15

Needless to say, no one was happy about the revelation that Leviathan and Zodiac had been working with Hydra. Howard swore into the plane’s radio and promised to send a whole team to remove the equipment and take the few prisoners they’d captured. They’d all thought Hydra had died in the war, but it remained to be seen whether these were the remnants of the war or new recruits.

The other three had been brought along specifically to collect whatever they found, whereas she, Dugan, and Bucky had been the offensive support. When the rest of Howard’s team arrived, they headed back to the States. The original plan had been to stay just in case something else happened. But Bucky was restless as soon as he found out the men were Hydra. He didn’t want to leave any of them alive, and paced around outside the factory, occasionally miming like he was going to punch something.

So Steph decided it was probably better to get him out of there. He still seemed angry once they left, but not uncontrollably so. Dugan sat up in the front of the plane with the pilot, so once they were off the ground, Steph shifted seats so she could sit next to Bucky.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah…” he stared down at his hands. “It’s just…  _ Hydra _ . I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore…”

“I know what you mean…” Steph mumbled. “I was so sure we’d destroyed all but a few of the pawns with Schmidt dead and Zola behind bars…”

“Now that I know they’re out there, all I want to do it hunt down every last one of those bastards…” He clenched his hand into a fist. “Make them pay for what they’ve done.”

“We will, Bucky. You can be sure we won’t just leave this alone.” She sighed and looked out the window. “I can’t believe they survived the war. I never took them seriously, even though they always said that stupid thing. Cut off one head…”

“Two more will take its place.”

Steph looked at him and Bucky raised his head to meet her eyes.

“You think I could be their prisoner for years without learning their favorite catchphrase?”

“I guess not…” Steph dropped her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Bucky… That you had to go through all that… I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner…”

“You found me. That’s what matters.” He looked down and touched her hand tentatively. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be rotting in that cell, half out of my mind.” He paused. “Or dead.”

Steph glanced at him, and smiled lightly. “Well, you saved my life today. And you found that secret underground lab. So we’re even.” She turned her hand slightly to take his fingers. “Thanks, by the way. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shot that guy.”

“Aw, well. You’re Captain America. How do we know the bullets wouldn’t have just bounced off you?”

Steph frowned. “I’ve been shot before. And bullets definitely hurt.”

Bucky chuckled lightly. “They sure as hell do.” He looked at her again, and their eyes met. 

Steph realized they were sitting quite close, with their fingers around each other’s. It made her suddenly nervous, so she pulled back slightly and crossed her arms over her chest.

Bucky cleared his throat. “Uh, I owe you an apology.”

Steph looked at him in confusion. “What for?”

“Yelling at you when I found out… Before you left on that last mission.”

“Oh.” Steph looked away again. “No, you were right. I didn’t tell you and I should have… But I…”

“It’s okay. Peggy explained it to me.”

Steph glanced at him. “So… you and Peggy. What’s going on there?”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Nothing. In no uncertain terms, she rejected me.”

Both Steph’s eyebrows rose towards her hairline. She tried to school her expression so she didn't show her relief. “Was this before or after you kissed her?”

“After, damn! I’m not that bad.”

It was Steph’s turn to roll her eyes. “Sure about that? After all, I’m pretty sure no girl’s rejected you before.”

“Really?”

Bucky’s voice was so honestly curious that Steph dropped her arms and turned and looked at him again. “Yeah. Maybe you weren’t as bad as Howard, but you certainly were a charmer.”

Bucky smirked lightly. “Yeah? What else did I do?”

Steph watched him for a moment. “You want to know?”

“Of course I do.”

She took a deep breath. “Well, I do owe you. I promised to talk about our past. So… what do you want to know?”

Bucky titled his head slightly. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

Steph laughed. “The beginning? Buck, that was something like twenty years ago.” Her smile wavered slightly when she realized just how many years she’d known Bucky.

“Yeah, then start there.”

“Okay.” Steph looked down and picked at a loose thread in her uniform. A small smile came to her face. “So, you’ve heard what Project Rebirth did to me, right? How I was before? This sickly, thin little kid.”

Bucky nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, that never stopped me from… trying to stand up to bad guys, to bullies, even when I was little. We were… maybe seven or eight. There were these big kids, twelve-year-olds, probably, picking on this toddler who lived on the same block. Times were hard back then, so kids didn’t have a lot. But this one had a wooden toy train. Not store-bought, hand-made, probably by a relative. So of course these bullies took it from him, left the poor kid crying. And no one was going to stand up to them. So I did, even though they were all at least twice my size. I demanded they give the toy back, and even tried to fight them.” Steph smiled lightly. “I think I did get it back, and the kid ran away. But those bullies had a new target. And for my part, I never backed down unless I couldn’t walk anymore.”

“Jesus, Steph.”

Steph laughed softly. “Oh, I was the worst. But as I’m getting the snot beat out of me, all of a sudden, from out of nowhere, this other boy about my age jumps on the back of the biggest one, and yells at him.” She looked up and met Bucky’s eyes. He watched her curiously. “We got in a scuffle, but when neither of us backed down, the older kids got bored and wandered off. We were covered in bruises, and I think I had a black eye.

“This boy looks at me and says, ‘That was pretty stupid. Standing up to those guys.’ I was all prepared to take him on too, even though he’d just jumped to my aid. But then his face lit up with this… this smile.” Steph smiled lightly too, remembering it. Bucky smiled, watching her. “And then he said, ‘But it was kinda fun.’ He held out his hand and said, ‘I’m Bucky Barnes. Nice to meet’cha.’” Steph looked at him.

He shook his head, smile still on his face. “That’s some story. Wish I could remember it…”

“Nothing still?” she asked quietly.

“No…” he said slowly. “Sorry.”

“It’s not…” Steph sighed. “It’s not your fault.”

He frowned. “You don’t think I will, do you?”

Steph met his eyes again. “You remember all these other things, from the last few years, but you don’t remember anything from before the war. I think…”

“I’m not going to stop trying. So I need you to not give up on me, okay? Maybe we just haven’t found the right trigger yet.”

“So you think learning about more of your past will do it?”

“Maybe. So tell me, what happened after that?”

Steph blew out a huff of air. “Well, I didn’t even know your real name was James for weeks after that.”

“Really?” He smirked lightly.

“Oh, you hated your given name! I only found out because you got in trouble and your mom would call you James Buchanan Barnes when you’d done something really bad.”

He laughed outright at that. “What did I do?”

“Who knows? We were eight. And you got in trouble so often, that I can’t even remember what it was that time.”

“Oy, you’re making me out to be quite a troublemaker.”

“And with me constantly getting in fights, we were nightmares for our parents.” She looked down at their hands again and gently nudged his hand with her pinky finger. “But they never tried to separate us. Maybe they even knew back then.”

“Knew what?”

Steph tried her hardest not to turn scarlet. Even though she had gone back and forth so many times about whether or not she would just tell Bucky she was in love with him, she still couldn’t do it. So instead, she said, “That we were inseparable. Best friends. You always… You always had my back, through every stupid back alley fight and seasonal illness. You were there for me.” This time she did take his hand. “So I’m here for you. You asked before, why I was so invested in your recovery. That’s why.”

Bucky squeezed her hand gently. “See? That wasn’t so hard. Now if you’d just told me from the beginning…”

Steph rolled her eyes. “Shut up and let me tell you another story. We do have a long flight back to the States.”

 

Bucky really wanted to remember his past. Sure, things were great now that he wasn’t mad at Steph, and Steph wasn’t mad at him, and they were actually  _ talking _ . She told him all kinds of things about how they used to be, and it felt easy, being friends with her. He could see how they’d become friends in the first place. And while she never lied to him, not even by omission, because she answered any question he had in full, it still seemed like there was something else there. Maybe it was just that lingering sadness in her eyes. They were friends, they were both alive, they were going on missions and watching each other’s backs. But he still didn’t remember their childhood. And he could tell that hurt her.

All he wanted was to wipe away that sadness. He’d seen this sparkle in her eyes a few times, when she told stories about them, as she reminisced. But it would go out when she came back to reality and found he didn’t also fondly recall the events. He always wanted her to look like that, to look at him like that. And okay, yeah, maybe he wanted more than just friendship between them. But that was something he couldn't possibly act on, not while she only remembered the person he used to be when she looked at him. If he was going to do anything, he needed to be that person she remembered.

So he figured maybe the words and stories weren’t enough. He needed a visible reminder. Which is what started his quest for photographs. When he’d first asked Steph about it, she just shook her head and told him they were poor, they hadn’t had any photographs taken before the war. Steph didn’t have an official enlistments photo either, since she hadn’t technically enlisted as a soldier. She was a test subject. But that still didn’t stop him from going through the archives on his down time.

Which is where Howard Stark found him one day. “Hey Barnes,” he called from the doorway.

Bucky turned to look at him from the table where he’d laid out various files. He’d found tons of pictures of Captain America, but none of Steph Rogers, the scrawny girl from Brooklyn. “Stark,” he said.

“Heard you’ve been digging through archives.” Stark strode over to Bucky’s table to see what he was looking at.

“I thought maybe something would trigger my memory…” He picked up one of the photos of Captain America, saluting and smiling winningly at the camera. It was a propaganda photo, and it irked him, that this is what they had Steph do at first. “But I can’t find much from before the war. I found my old deployment photo, but it didn’t bring up anything. And of course Steph doesn’t have one…”

“Well, I have something.” He held out a photograph. “This was taken on the day of the procedure,  _ before _ it got started.”

Bucky stood and carefully took the photo from Howard. It showed a man with grey hair and glasses shaking hands with a thin girl in an Army uniform. The man wore a lab coat, and was probably this Dr. Erskine. The girl was thin as a rake, and at least a foot shorter than him. She looked nervous, but determined. 

Howard stuck his hands in his pockets. “There was going to be a story about the procedure, but that got thrown out when that spy blew up the place and killed Dr. Erskine. Since I worked on Project Rebirth, it ended up in my records.”

Bucky barely heard him because he kept staring at the girl in the picture.

“I know. Really surprisingly to see how Steph looked before the muscles, right? She’s almost unrecognizable. You’d never think someone like that could turn into Captain America.”

He was right. She was unrecognizable from how she looked now, but she wasn’t unrecognizable to him. Maybe that was why. He’d kept trying to picture Captain America thinner and smaller. But that wasn’t enough. He needed to see what Steph Rogers looked like back when she was only Steph Rogers.

He blinked and looked back up at Stark. There wasn’t some huge epiphany. He didn’t stand there in shock. He  _ knew _ his past, just like that. And there was one more thing he knew. He was in love with Steph Rogers. And he was several years over-due on telling her.

He smiled widely and clapped Howard on the shoulder. “Thanks, Stark.”

“No problem…” Howard said slowly, surprised by Bucky’s enthusiasm. 

“Um… Excuse me, sir…”

Both men turned to look at the door. An assistant stood there looking very nervous.

“Yeah?” Howard asked.

“Captain Rogers and Director Carter have been looking for you. They said they have something important to discuss with you.” He glanced at Bucky. “Oh, and with Sergeant Barnes, too.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll be there.” Howard glanced back at Bucky and jerked his head towards the door. “Let’s go see what the ladies want.”

Bucky followed him out of the archives. He turned over years of memories in his head. It was odd, hearing Steph’s version of events, and then being able to remember them from his point of view. He remembered a little girl standing up to the resident bullies on the block and feeling like someone had to help her stay out of the hospital. He remembered ducking out of classes, and sneaking cigarettes when his mother wasn’t looking. He remembered going dancing and the few times he tried to drag Steph with him. He remembered how she got sick every winter. God, how she got sick. He remembered being so worried about her as he would sit by her bedside. Those were the few times he would pray. Because not even God was allowed to take Steph out of his life. He remembered the few really awful asthma attacks Steph had each year, and how he would hold her and try to help her breathe through sheer force of will. He remembered arguing with her on that last night before he left when all he wanted to do was pull her close and kiss her, but he just couldn’t. He remembered getting dragged away by Zola’s men and,  _ “Find Steph Rogers. Tell her… Tell her I love her.” _

The thought of seeing Steph again and finally telling her what he should have said years ago was what kept him going through those years of imprisonment and experimentation. Even when it felt like he was losing his grip on reality, he knew he had to get home because there was something he  _ had _ to do. And now, with his memories back, and hindsight, he remembered the way Steph had looked at him when she’d found him. How she’d breathed out  _ “Bucky…” _ like she was going to cry. He’d been missing for years. Had she given up on ever seeing him again?

They stopped in front of Steph’s office. Howard knocked and then proceeded to let himself in. Bucky rolled his eyes as he followed. They found Steph and Peggy leaning over a map table, planning out something, while Dum Dum watched from the corner.

Steph looked up at them. She met Bucky’s eyes and smiled briefly. His heart literally skipped a beat. He’d always thought that was a figure of speech, not something that could actually happen. But he looked in those eyes and remembered how desperately he was in love with this girl. If the room wasn’t full of people, he’d have said as much right then and there.

“What’s the skinny?” Howard asked as he approached the map table and looked down to see they were examining a map of Russia.

“We… uh… managed to get more out of our friend the assassin.” Steph glanced up at Peggy, who smiled wickedly, before going back to her normally serious expression.

“We got a location,” Carter said. “We believe it is where she was trained, and assigned to attack Steph and her team.”

“The  _ problem _ ,” Steph said as she tapped her index finger on the map, “is the location is here, in Russia.”

“We’ve had fun run-ins there before,” Dum Dum said. “Getting in won’t be easy. Going unnoticed won’t be easy either.”

“Which means we can’t do a normal sized field team,” Steph said as she straightened up so she could look at Bucky and Howard. “I want to only take three people. And the only three people I trust enough for this mission are Dum Dum, Peggy, and Bucky.”

Stark glanced back at Bucky, and then at the other two. “Peg?” he asked last. “She’s not a field agent.”

“She’s had plenty of field training,” Steph said. “And quite honestly, she’s worlds better than most the SHIELD agents we have.”

Peggy smiled, pleased with the comment, but didn’t say anything. “We will also have an easier time getting across the border with two women than a group of men and one woman.”

“People always underestimate us,” Steph said as she looked back down at the map.

“That they do,” Peggy agreed.

Bucky almost couldn’t believe this was the same girl who’d gotten beaten up in every back alley in Brooklyn. But at the same time, he could believe it perfectly. Of course his Steph Rogers would become Captain America. There was no one else it could’ve been.

“When do we leave?” Bucky asked. Steph looked up to meet his eyes. Aching at the back of his mind was his need to tell her, before any more time had passed.

“I want wheels up in an hour.” She turned from Bucky to look at Stark. “Can you do that?”

He nodded. “I can make it happen. Why the rush?”

“The sooner we get there, the better. They probably cleared out once Yolanda was captured, but we need to recover whatever intel we can get.” She glanced at Peggy. “And… she was frightened, really frightened, when we got the location out of her. The way she said the name of that place, it was like she was talking about the devil and hell itself.”

“What’s it called?” Bucky asked.

Steph looked at him again. “The Red Room.”

After a beat, Bucky said, “Sounds ominous.”

“That’s why I want to get over there as soon as possible and see what exactly they’re doing. So suit up everyone.”

Dum Dum nodded and headed out of the room. On his way out, he clapped Bucky on the shoulder.

“Howard, go make sure the plane is ready to go,” Steph said as she rolled up the map.

“Hey, who’s the director of who here?” Stark asked.

“Howard,” Carter said. She gave him a look.

So he rolled his eyes and turned for the door. “I’m going. I’m going.” He shook his head at Bucky. “Women.” And then he was gone too.

Steph turned to Peggy and touched her arm gently. “You still got your Army threads?”

“Better.” Carter smirked. “I have a SHIELD-issued field uniform. It’s nowhere near as fancy as yours, but it’s better than a skirt and a blouse.” She gathered her things as well. 

Steph smiled. “And no heels.”

Peggy laughed as she walked out. “Certainly not,” she called over her shoulder.

Steph looked up and seemed surprised to see Bucky still standing there. “Hey, Buck. You should get ready too. And bring your sniper rifle, just in case we need to do some staking out.”

“Yeah…” he mumbled. His thoughts were going a million miles an hour with one thing.  _ Tellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellhertellher. _

She paused halfway around the table when he didn’t move. “Something wrong?” she asked slowly. “Is it about the mission? I know I shoulda asked before dragging you into something this big, but you, Peggy, and Dum Dum really are the only ones I trust on this.” She came to stand in front of him.

“No, it’s not about the mission.” His heart sank into his stomach. Because he remembered Steph’s rule. No talking about big things before a mission. And this was nothing if not a big thing. All he wanted to do was reach out and touch her and tell her he loved her. But that was going to have to wait. At the very least, he’d already waited almost his whole life. What were a few more days?

Bucky smiled. “Don’t worry about it. Got something to talk to you about when he get back. Figure this takes priority.”

“Okay…” she said curiously. “Remind me when we get back.” She squeezed his arm, and then walked around him to head towards the locker where her Captain America uniform was stored.

Bucky turned to watch her walk off. “Trust me, I won’t forget,” he said, pretty much to himself. “Never again…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Bucky. Why did you tell her?


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: This chapter is kind of graphic and violent. So I want to put that out there as a warning. 
> 
> In a fic I read recently, the person put specific trigger warnings in the end of chapter notes, to avoid spoilers. So I'm going to do that. If you are worried about triggers, scroll to the bottom for the specific warnings.

Bucky had been acting a bit strange all day, but it wasn’t enough that it was noticeable to everyone else. And quite honestly, Steph couldn't spare the thought on what was going on with him, because she had to focus on this potentially incredibly dangerous mission. It wasn’t every day they had to try to sneak into Russia to steal intel, after all.

But he was fine on the plane ride over. He focused on his own job, and seemed to take to heart her rule about not talking about anything but the mission before a mission. Not having to worry about him going off-book was a relief. She spent her time prepping for the mission, herself. They all had fake papers, in case they were stopped on their way over the border. If they were caught at the Red Room facility, the papers wouldn’t be much help, but they could get them there. Howard was ready with an extraction team just in case they needed to get out fast. All the surveillance they had told them the place was indeed abandoned. But better safe than sorry. If Hydra really was involved, she knew better than anyone that they liked to operate under the surface.

They wore civilian clothes over their uniforms, in order to blend in. An undercover operative gave them a ride across the border in his truck, pretending to just pick up some strangers in need of a ride. Peggy and Dum Dum sat up front in the cabin, while Bucky and Steph sat in the back. They were better suited to deal with the cold.

Bucky kept his hand firmly on the nondescript black bag that carried his gun. Peggy and Dum Dum also had various weapons stashed on their bodies. Steph hid her shield on her back under the massive overcoat she wore. The thing was bulky enough to hide the round shape.

“Hey,” she said, just barely loud enough to be heard over the bumps and jolts of the road. But Bucky’s hearing was better than the average human’s, thanks to the serum. He looked up and met her eyes, so she smiled softly. “This is going to be real quick. In and out.”

He smiled too, just a bit. “You’re optimistic today.” His hand stayed tightly wrapped around the strap of his bag, however.

“Well, someone has to be.” She smiled lightly. “It’s one of my superpowers.”

“Hey,” Dum Dum said through the window in the truck cabin. “You’re speaking in English with an American accent.”

Steph smirked at Bucky, but didn’t say anything else. 

They stopped about a mile away from the facility.Their spy headed back to his post so no one would notice he was gone. He had dropped them on a hill overlooking the facility. Bucky crouched down and assembled his gun so he could examine the buildings. Steph pulled off her outer coat and slipped her shield onto her arm. She stepped up next to Bucky and looked down.

“Anything?”

“No signs of movement… Looks like the source was correct.” He lowered the rifle and looked up at Steph. “What do you want to do?”

“This is good,” Peggy said. “If they’re not there, we should be able to get in and search for intel on this Red Room.”

“They might have wiped out everything before they left,” Dum Dum pointed out. 

“That’s what we came all the way over here to see,” Steph said. “Come on, let’s go. But be careful. There might be traps.”

They made their way down the hill carefully. The snow muffled their already stealthily quiet footsteps. But it also gave the world an eerie silent quality that put Steph on edge. She was used to snow, had grown up with it most her life. She’d had pneumonia a few times from staying out in the rain and snow too long during cold New York winters. But this was different. At least in New York there was always noise, from something or another. Here, it felt like she had cotton in her ears. She couldn’t even hear any birds or animals around.

They walked through the front gates, which had been left hanging open."No footprints,” Peggy observed. “No one has been here in at least a few days.”

Once inside, they could see the facility was split between two buildings, with a large courtyard in the center. The layer of snow on everything meant they couldn’t see much.

Steph looked between the two buildings and then lowered her shield. “Let’s split up. I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to.” She looked at her team. “Dugan, Carter, you two take the South building. Barnes and I will take the North building.” She pulled out the black transponder-looking things Stark had given to them before they’d left. “Stark said if we find any terminals, plug one of these in, and he might be able to get data off it. Otherwise, see if they’ve left any files behind. If you find anything unusual, radio in.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dum Dum said. He looked at Peggy and nodded towards the South building. Peggy took one of the black boxes from Steph and they headed off.

Steph turned and met Bucky’s eyes. He had his rifle in his hands, and it was half raised. The expression he had on his face was hard to decipher. “You want to head in first?” he said. “I’ll cover you.”

Steph nodded and lead the way over to the door of the North building. At the very least, they had locked it before they left. Steph gave it a good whack with her shield, while Bucky had his rifle raised and pointed at the door, just in case something decided to surprise them. But it was empty inside. The windows in the building were set very high, and were frosted over, so very little natural light got in.

A long hallway came out into what appeared to be classrooms. These classrooms had very large glass viewing windows, though. Some still had wooden desks in them, and some were empty rooms with rolling chalkboards up against the walls. The floors were concrete. And they had drains.

“What is this place…?” Steph whispered. She peered through one of the windows. And then she tried the door leading into the classroom. It opened. Her boots echoed softly on the concrete floors as she walked in the room. Bucky stayed out in the hallway, his eyes open for attacks. The concrete had a slightly rough, white quality to it, like it had been bleached one too many times. Steph had a pretty good idea why you’d need to bleach concrete. She gave the room a perfunctory search, but found nothing. They looked in the other rooms too, and then made their way deeper into the building.

They passed a few more rooms with concrete floors and drains, long halls with metal beds, and one room that had probably been some kind of cafeteria. But very little had been left behind. However, one thing was clear.

“They weren’t just training assassins here…” Steph said. “They were raising them. “These are all sized for children…”

Bucky frowned. “They’d been training, what, girls, to be assassins? That’s…”

“Sounds like someone Hydra would like to work with,” Steph said grimly. “No wonder they teamed up.” She sighed and shifted her shield on her arm. “Come on. Let’s keep moving.”

They found a room of filing cabinets next. “Now we’re talking…” Bucky mumbled as they moved into the room.

“Help me look.” Steph strapped the shield to her back so she could use both hands to start opening drawers. The first filing cabinet was completely empty. Only a few paperclips remained. Bucky had similar luck.

“They really did clean house before they left…” he said when they met in the middle.

Steph groaned. “If we don’t find anything…” She rested her hands on her hips. “If I brought you guys all the way over here for nothing…”

“You couldn’t not come, on that intel,” he said. “You know you couldn’t leave alone something like that.”

Steph looked at him. “That’s what’s beginning to worry me. She knew we had to check this out.”

He opened his mouth, but then didn’t say anything. Instead he shook his head. “Then let’s get this done.”

Steph pulled her shield off her back and held it on her left arm. They walked back out into the hallway and realized they were almost at the other end of the building. At the very end of the hall was a last set of double doors, that lead into a large room with no windows and no natural light of any kind. Through the darkness, they could just make out a flashing light.

“Is that a terminal of some kind?” Steph asked as she started to walk into the room. “Maybe we’ll finally get something.” She glanced over her shoulder. “See if you can find a switch.”

Bucky nodded and moved along the wall while Steph moved closer to what she could now make out as a large machine. The blinking red light did indeed seem to be part of a terminal. It flashed over a gray button. Just as Steph reached out to press it, Bucky found the switch and the lights came on.

The light was part of some kind of read-out. It looked like the machine was waiting for a command. So Steph pressed the button. The red light abruptly disappeared, and then was replaced with green letters on the black screen. They appeared slowly, one at a time.

Y-O-U-H-A-V-E-B-E-E-N-F-O-O-L-I-S-H-C-A-P-T-A-I-N

Steph stared down at the words, but before she could do anything, they moved up and new words appeared below them.

N-O-O-N-E-L-E-A-V-E-S-T-H-E-R-E-D-R-O-O-M

Red lights appeared all over the machine, and Steph realized with sinking dread that they were timers. Dozens of trigger mechanisms, hooked into this machine. It was some kind of bomb. She turned quickly to look at Bucky, whose eyes had gone wide.

“Run!” she yelled. She turned back to the machine just in time to see it type out one more message, but then she turned on her heel and took off out of the room, close behind Bucky.

H-E-I-L-H-Y-D-R-A. 3-0-S-E-C-O-N-D-S

Steph tried to count down in her head as they ran. She was fast, incredibly fast, but there was no way she was going to overtake Bucky. If anything, she would make sure he was the first one out the door. The bastard serum in his veins had increased his strength to almost rival hers, though. So he set a breakneck pace. But he kept glancing over his shoulder to make sure she was behind him.

“Stop looking back! Just run!” She could feel the blood pounding in her ears, as the clock in her head ticked down. The building was huge. The main hallway twisted and turned a few times. When Bucky came to the first curve, he just let himself run into the wall and braced with his hands so he could push himself off and keep going. Steph did the same with the shield and left a huge dent.

“Faster, Bucky!” Steph screamed. They were out of time.

The main entrance came into view, only 50 yards away, just as the whole building gave a thunderous rumble. Bucky’s feet skidded on the concrete floor as he tried to keep his balance. Steph darted forward with her shield raised when he toppled over and the wall next to him came crashing down.

“Bucky!!!” she screamed, but it was swallowed in the cacophonous sound of the collapsing building. She tried her best to protect them with her shield. The force of falling cement hitting the vibranium made her bones reverberate. 

After a few minutes, the dust settled, and the rumbling died down. It seemed the worst of the damage had been done. Steph carefully shoved a fallen beam off her shield and kicked more debris away so she could get air. Luckily, they weren’t buried, since they’d been so close to the entrance. If they’d been closer to the back of the building, they would’ve been in serious trouble.

Steph crouched and brushed away dust. She dropped her shield off her arm so she could use both hands, and then she whipped back around. “Bucky! Bucky,” she said quickly, pushing aside more rubble.

He coughed and then cried out in pain. Steph moved over one more chunk of something to find the wall had fallen on top of him. Almost his entire left arm was pinned under a massive one-foot-thick slab of concrete. He shifted again, and yelled. His right hand went to the wall to try to push it off, but it didn’t budge, not even a little.

“Bucky, Bucky…” Steph continued to mumble, so relieved he was alive. “My God…” She dropped to her knees next to him and put her hand on his chest. “Talk to me.”

He cracked his eyes open and looked up at her. She could tell from his expression he was in a lot of pain. “‘m okay…” he said. “I’m alive.” He turned his head carefully and looked at the concrete. “Damn…”

“Hang on,” she said. She shifted to his other side, as best she could. “I’m going to try to get this off.” She gripped the bottom edges of the wall and tried to lift it. More of the building and rumble had fallen on top of it. Even with her incredible strength, she could only manage about a quarter of an inch. “Can you… can you pull your arm free?” she huffed out.

He propped his right hand against the broken edge of wall and tried to push, but after shifting slightly, he screamed out in pain and dropped his hand. “Stop, stop! There’s something…”

Steph let the wall settle back down and Bucky titled his head back against the ground and grit his teeth so hard Steph was afraid they would crack.

“Buck…” she whispered. “Bucky.” She leaned over him and touched his face gently, trying to ease the tension. “Talk to me.”

When he got his breath back, he opened his eyes again and searched for hers. “There’s a… there’s a rod or somethin’… impaling my arm to the ground.”

Steph crouched down and tried to look under the wall. She could just barely see there was some kind of metal support beam stabbing through Bucky’s upper arm. It had clearly gone right through the bone, and had severed the arm nearly in half, before lodging itself solidly in the ground. “Okay, okay… this is… we can…” She pulled off her helmet and dropped it on the ground. “I can find something to cut you out.”

“No, wait, Steph…” He reached up and grabbed her arm. “They knew we’d come here. They set that bomb to try to kill us. You think they’re not going to come and check we’re dead?” He looked at her. “You have to get out of here. There isn’t time to find something to cut me out.”

“I’m not leaving without you!” she said earnestly. “Don’t even suggest that!”

“And I’m not letting you die to try to save me!” he yelled back at her.

“I won’t lose you again!” She put her hand over his and squeezed it tightly. She leaned over him and put her other hand on the side of his face. “I can’t! Bucky, I  _ can’t _ lose you.”

“Go! Make sure Carter and Dum Dum are okay. Call the extraction team, and have them bring tools. You can come back for me.”

Steph was already shaking her head before he finished talking. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

Steph’s radio crackled to life. “ _ Steph, Steph! Come in. Do you read me? What was that? _ ”

Steph pulled her radio off her belt, but kept her other hand over Bucky’s on her arm. “Peggy! We’re here. There was an explosion, took down the building. Looks like it was a trap. We probably need to get out of here before someone comes to see what caused the trap to spring. I’m okay. Bucky is injured, and pinned. We need to find something strong enough to cut through concrete or steel to get him out.”

Peggy cursed. “ _ I’ll see what we can find. Hang tight. _ ”

"You know they're not going to find the right tools here." He squeezed her arm tighter. "You have to get out of here."

"No, Bucky!"

"God damnit, Steph! Why do you always have to be so fucking stubborn, you stupid girl?"

Steph stared down at him. "You… You used to say that to me all the time, growing up..."

"That's because you always were! For once in your life, can you just retreat and save yourself?"

"You remembered..." she said so quietly that if it wasn't so silent around them, he wouldn't have been able to hear.

He looked up at her. "Yeah, I remembered. Everything. Right before we left for this mission. Couldn't say anything cause of your stupid rule."

Steph licked her dry lips. "Bucky. All those years I spent raiding Hydra bases, it wasn't to take down Hydra, or for the war. That was part of it, but that wasn't why I kept doing it. I was looking for  _ you _ ." She cupped the side of his face with her hand again. "I spent years trying to find you again. So I am never leaving you behind." She paused. "I love you."

He looked at her, and then looked away. But his eyes drifted back to hers. "After all that time, you still got there first." He shifted and winced in pain. His hand moved from her arm to the back of her head, to pull her down closer. "I love you. Even when I didn't remember, I'd started to fall in love with you again."

Steph stared down at him, and then she leaned forward and crashed their lips together. Bucky didn't seem surprised by the kiss at all. He tightened his fingers in her short hair as he kissed her back, hard.

Steph kept kissing him, even though she felt like she was going to fall apart. She kept her eyes closed and rested her forehead against his. "I'm not leaving without you. I can't lose you again. I can't. I can't..."

"Steph…." he whispered. She'd never heard him say her name like that before, like a prayer.

"Don't… I'll get you out of here. I promise."

"We're not going to be able to get this thing out of my arm." He groaned, which made her pull back slightly so she could look down into his face. "I have an idea. And it's really, really bad. But it means you won't have to leave me here."

"Well, what is it?" She asked breathlessly.

He looked up and searched her face. Then he took a deep breath and said, "Cut off my arm."

Steph's mouth dropped open in surprise. "Buck… That… I..."

"The arm's dead anyway. That rod shattered my bone and I can't feel anything below my elbow. I think the wall turned my arm to jelly. You don't heal from that. Even with super soldier serum. It'll be useless to me in the future. Might as well cut it off. Cause we're not going to be able to remove it from this wall."

"You don't know that. Just wait. I can get you out. Let me try..."

"Steph, we have to get out of here. The longer I'm pinned under here, the longer I'm bleeding out anyway." He was still in a lot of pain. She could see that in his face. But his expression softened slightly. He carded his fingers through her hair shakily. "It's okay. There's a knife on my belt. You should be able to cut through."

She fumbled around his waist until she found the hunting knife sheathed on his belt. She pulled it out and saw it had a wicked long blade. And one side was serrated. She met his eyes again. "This is going to hurt. A lot."

He nodded once. "I know. Do it."

Steph carefully pulled her radio out of her belt again. “Peg, do you copy?”

“ _ Yes, I’m here, Steph. _ ”

“Call the emergency extraction team. Make sure they have first aid equipment on hand.” She looked down and met Bucky’s eyes. He nodded again. “And plenty of type O blood.”

There was a pause, and then Peggy said, “ _ I’m on it. _ ”

Steph attached the radio back to her belt and looked at the knife. She leaned down and kissed Bucky quickly. "I love you. I love you," she mumbled and kissed him again. "Please don't hate me for this."

He huffed out a breath that was half exasperation, half pain. "I'm the one telling you to do it."

Before starting, she pulled off her gloves, so she could get the best grip possible on the knife. She’d be stronger with her bare hands, anyway. She maneuvered so she could get as close to the fallen wall as possible and reached under with the knife so she could cut near the shattered bone. She glanced at him again. "Ready?"

He had squeezed his eyes closed, and he was already gritting his teeth. He nodded shakily, so she didn't hesitate anymore. She started sawing through cloth and flesh. The blood that had been pooling under him seemed like nothing compared to the fresh blood that came gushing out, covering her hands.

Bucky grabbed her uniform sleeve with his right hand and twisted it in his grip tight enough that she thought it was in danger of tearing. She wouldn’t care if it did. He ground his teeth together, but even that wasn’t enough. She knew he’d tried to hold it in. But no one could go through having their arm sawed off with no anesthetic without screaming. He squeezed her sleeve tighter and thrashed his foot against the ground, but he did eventually start screaming.

Steph concentrated on what she was doing. “Just hang on, Buck. Hang on. It’s okay. It’s okay…” she mumbled as she tried to work as quickly and efficiently as possible. She’d seen her fair share of soldiers lose their limbs. But she’d never been the one who had to do it. She had, however, held people down. But it wasn’t the blood or the gruesome nature of the task that made her feel like she was going to be sick. It was the fact that she had to sit there and listen to the man she loved howl in pain because of what  _ she _ was doing to him.

“Almost, almost, almost…” she mumbled as she cut through the other side. Bucky was on the edge of going into shock, so she pulled him away from the wall. She scrambled to her feet and ran out to the snow. She grabbed two large handfuls, but she could still see the red color of her hands through the white. She rushed back and skidded down to Bucky’s side. She pressed the snow to the wound and he screamed in pain again.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry…” She pulled the ragged remains of the uniform sleeve off his stump and tied his coat back around the arm, to put pressure on the wound. “Bucky, Bucky. Listen to me.” She wrapped one hand around the back of his neck and leaned over him while she continued to press down on his arm with the other. He was still thrashing in pain, but he finally managed to seek out her face again. He was covered in sweat, and his skin was dangerously pale. “I need you to put pressure on your arm. I can’t carry you out of here and do that at the same time. I need you to stay with me.” Her voice broke a bit at the end there. She was trying to be Captain America. But she fell back to Steph Rogers.

He couldn’t even speak. But he did manage to get his right hand over the stump. His uniform was already tinged pink from the snow and blood. She made sure he had a good amount of pressure on the wound, and then she stood and helped him to his feet. She practically had to drag him out of the remains of the building. It had started to snow again while they’d been in there, so their footprints from earlier were already covered. God, that seemed like a lifetime ago.

Peggy and Dum Dum met them near the gate. “My God. My God…” Peggy chanted when she saw the state Bucky was in.

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph,” Dum Dum said in shock.

As soon as they got out the gate, Bucky’s legs gave out and his right hand dropped. Steph lowered him to the ground. “Buck. Bucky! Bucky! Bucky, wake up! Stay with me!” She piled more snow around the wound and pressed down on it. “Bucky, God, Bucky, please…”

A truck pulled up next to them and a team of men jumped out. Some had guns raised and scanned the perimeter for threats. Others pulled down a gurney and went to work securing Bucky to it.

“He’s lost too much blood!” Steph said too loudly as they were shuffled into the truck. It tore off down the road, and the medical team began examining Bucky’s arm. They even looked shocked and disgusted by the state of the wound, and they were surely used to wartime amputations.

Steph wasn’t really sure what happened after that. She wasn’t even sure if she’d started crying, or if her face was wet from the snow and the cold. It didn’t take long to get to the airfield where the plane that would get them out of Russia was waiting for them, along with more medical equipment. They wouldn’t let Steph around Bucky for hours. At some point, she noticed her shield and helmet sitting next to her. She didn’t remember picking them up, so someone on the extraction team must have grabbed them.

It wasn’t until they were on a larger plane heading back across the Atlantic that the doctors thought they had Bucky stable. It didn’t help that Steph hadn’t had anything to sterilize the blade before she used it to cut off Bucky’s arm, so they had to take extra care cauterising the wound. Steph walked up to the gurney Bucky was strapped to and dropped down on the bench beside him. Both an IV and a blood transfusion were hooked up to his right arm. His whole left side was bandaged, along with various other minor injuries.

Steph carefully took his right hand in both of hers. His skin was still too pale and cold. He was alive, but it was anyone’s guess if he would wake up. They’d said the physical shock of losing his arm could still kill him. She gently lifted his hand and brushed her lips along his knuckles. God, her hands were still stained red, with his blood. 

“Bucky…” she whispered. But then she swallowed and tried again. “Dear God, I know I… I’m not so good at this. My mother’d be ashamed of me for how little I pray.” Her lips quirked in a smile. “Bucky’s ma too. But here I am now. I know maybe it’s a lot, me praying for something when I already got the perfect body and the ability to fight in the war.” She lowered her head. “And I found Bucky, even if he didn’t remember me for a long time. So please… I’m asking you, don’t take him away from me. He’s all I… He’s all I ever had. I’m supposed to be tough and strong. I’m Captain America. I fight the good fight. But I can’t keep going if I lose him again… So I’m praying to you, let Bucky live… I’ll do… I’ll keep fighting and helping people for the rest of my life, just let him recover from this.” She lowered her forehead to rest on their hands. “Please God, don’t take my Bucky away…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Body mutilation, amputation, blood, violence 
> 
>  
> 
> Now for the actual notes...  
> Finally! But, well... yeah. Sorry. I'm an asshole. Upon rereading this, I even got choked up at the end there.
> 
> I love this scene. And for me, the love and tragedy go hand in hand. That describes this pairing so perfectly for me.


	17. Chapter 17

Bucky felt like shit. That was the first thing he noticed when he returned to consciousness. He felt like he'd been used as a punching bag for someone with super soldier strength. He hurt all over, in a dull way that meant they were trying to use painkillers. His eyelids felt heavy and his mouth was dry. He didn't want to be awake, but here he was.

Slowly, he cracked his eyelids open and stared up at the ceiling. A steady beeping and the crappy ceiling told him he was in a hospital. He carefully let his head roll to his right. There was a table, with an already filled glass of water, and a pitcher beside it. He shoved himself into more of a sitting position and grabbed the glass. The water was glorious. He swallowed the whole thing at once and then shakily set the glass back down. The noise made something at his feet shift.

He looked towards the foot of the bed and saw Steph sleeping with her legs thrown over the arm of a cheap hospital chair, and one arm curled under her head. She was wearing civilian clothes, which made Bucky realize he had rarely seen her in anything but military attire since the war. She had on trousers and a sweater, and looked like she'd been camping in the hospital room for a while. She shifted again and then opened her eyes.

A small smile came to Steph's face. "Hey..." She said quietly. "You're awake..." She pushed herself out of the chair and came to sit on the side of the bed. "How do you feel?"

Bucky wetted his lips, and then he reached out to run his fingers along the side of Steph's face. She leaned into his hand and then turned her head to kiss his palm. "Really want me to answer that?" he asked after a moment.

"That bad, then." She took his hand and gently kissed his fingers. "They thought you might not wake up at all..." She met his eyes and he could see how scared she'd been. Nothing scared Steph Rogers. "It was touch and go for a while there..." She ran her fingers through his messy hair. "So I'm happy you're awake..."

"Couldn't leave you hanging like that." He swallowed thickly and then he finally turned his head to the left to see the damage. He didn't really have any delusions about what he'd find. He remembered exactly how awful it'd been. He pulled his hand back so he could lift the edges of the shirt they’d put him in to see his left side all bandaged up. His arm ended abruptly about five inches above where the elbow used to be. It hurt, especially when he pressed down on it.

"They told me I should never become a field doctor," Steph said, trying to go for light-hearted. "I didn't do a very good job. They had to cut off more because of the broken bone." Her voice shook slightly. "I..." He looked back at her. "I tried..." She finished lamely.

He took a deep breath and then touched the side of her face so she'd look at him. "I know. I told you to do it, remember? Stop blaming yourself."

"Bucky, your arm… I could have tried something else. I  _ should _ have."

"Steph." She met his eyes. "The arm's gone. Obsessing about it isn't going to bring it back." She didn’t look convinced. “Besides, I’ve got my memories back. And… I’ve got you. I’d rather have those than the arm.”

“Bucky…” Steph said sadly. 

She scooted more onto the hospital bed and leaned over him so she could kiss him softly. He moved his hand around the back of her neck to anchor her there, and she gently ran her fingers along his jaw. The kiss was slow, languid, not urgent at all. Bucky was still injured, after all. But they’d spent years not doing this, so they had to make up for that time.

He moved his arm down to around her waist, so he could pull himself up closer to her. He couldn’t exactly prop himself up, lacking a second arm and all. So he held onto Steph to steady himself. And Steph, she wrapped one arm around his neck and slid the other hand down to rest on his chest. But she never broke away from the slow kissing.

They’d been all fear and urgency the previous… day? Night? Bucky actually had no idea how long he’d been out. At the very least, the last time they’d done this, it had been all about getting it out there,  _ finally _ making it clear they loved each other, in case it was the last chance they’d have to say it. He’d thought the sadness had been bad, but he never wanted to see that fear on Steph’s face again. It almost eclipsed the pain of having his arm sawed off. Almost.

He heard the sound of someone’s footsteps stop at the door, followed by a long, low whistle. Steph smiled against his lips, but she didn't pull back for another few seconds. When she finally did, she only moved back enough to look over her shoulder. Bucky tilted his head slightly to see Dum Dum standing there.

"So I see things have progressed between you two," he said as he walked into the room and took Steph's vacant seat.

Steph moved over so she could sit next to Bucky, instead of practically in his lap. But she didn't move far enough away that he had to move his arm from around her waist. "You could say that," she said.

"I got my memories back," Bucky told him.

Dum Dum's eyes widened briefly, and then he smiled. "Yeah? That's great. Finally made good on that commitment, then?"

"Something like that," he said.

Steph turned her head to look at him again. She smiled softly. The pain and sadness were still there, but they weren't as pronounced.

"So what happens now?" Dum Dum asked.

Steph sighed. "I don't know. But I think first of all, Bucky needs to finish healing, and then..." She glanced at Bucky again.

He realized they were talking about what would happen to him as an agent. It was pretty clear he couldn't keep doing field work, not with only one arm.

"What happened to the Russian assassin?"

"She's been transferred to a high-security military prison," Dum Dum said. "They're going to see if they can try her for both attacks."

"Well it was clear her  _ intel _ was all a trap to try to kill us," Steph said bitterly.

Bucky looked at Dum Dum. "What happened with you and Carter? How did you get out?"

"Steph told us what happened. You two were faster than us. We didn't reach the end of our building. The trigger mechanism must have been in that last room. So if there was a bomb in our building, it never went off."

Bucky sighed in relief. "That's good to hear. So you all are okay?" He looked between the two of them.

"You were the only one injured, Bucky," Dum Dum said. "And a hell of an injury, at that."

Steph looked away, and he could just imagine what was going through her head. They’d just argued about it after all. She was definitely still blaming herself. “Better than being dead,” he said, both in response to Dum Dum, and to remind her. “I have Steph to thank for that.”

Steph turned to look at him again, surprise clear on her face. “I’m the one who got you into that mess.”

“More importantly, you got me out. You got all of us out.”

She smiled, but she looked like she didn’t believe him.

This argument wasn’t going to go anywhere, so he fished around for another topic. He looked around the room, and noticed for the first time there were windows behind him. “So there are hospital rooms with windows here?”

Steph glanced over, and then said, “We’re not at Camp Lehigh.”

Bucky blinked. “We’re not? That’s where you took me last time.”

“Bucky, you were so badly injured, that Howard’s people couldn’t have possibly fixed you up.”

Bucky looked between her and Dum Dum. “So then, where are we?”

Steph smiled lightly. “We’re in a recovery room in New York City.”

Bucky stared at her, and then at Dum Dum, who was smirking at him, and then he turned back to Steph. “You mean…”

“Yeah.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Welcome home.”

“I…” He glanced out the window again, but he couldn’t see anything but sky. Still, if he listened, he could hear cars honking, and people talking and yelling, down on the street below. “It’s, uh… been a few years since I’ve been back in this city.”

“Over four,” Steph said.

“Would it be possible… after I’m released, to go around the city?” He looked at her. “Before we go back to Jersey?” In his mind, he wanted to call it “god damned New Jersey.”

Steph smiled. “We don’t actually have to go back.”

“We don’t?”

Dum Dum leaned forward. “Stark has been working on building a facility here in Manhattan, to distance himself from the military and the SSR. He says it’ll be up and running in the next week or two.” Dum Dum smirked. “Better than working out of some bunkers, right?”

“No kidding.” Bucky smiled widely. “So we get to move back to New York?”

“I actually already have an apartment here,” Steph admitted with a shrug.

“What?” Bucky stared at her. “Your old place in Brooklyn?”

Steph shook her head. “No, I lost that. It’s here, though I wanted to go back to Brooklyn… So it’ll be close when the facility opens.”

“How long have you had that?”

“Since we got back. I just… spent most my time on missions or at Camp Lehigh.” She smiled softly, like she was embarrassed. “When they release you, you can come stay there, with me…”

He couldn’t help but smile too. “Yeah? You don’t have old ladies living above you who’re gonna comment on how inappropriate that is, do you?”

Steph actually laughed at that. “God, I hope not. And when those old ladies weren’t saying it was inappropriate for a girl and a guy to spend so much time together, they would say we were bound to get married.” She ducked her head to try to hide the blush creeping onto her cheeks.

He’d forgotten how easy it was to embarrass her with topics like that. So he smirked and moved his hand to raise her chin back up and kiss her softly.

Dum Dum cleared his throat loudly, so Steph pulled back. She was still smiling, and still red. “Sorry, Dum Dum…”

“Is this how it’s going to be all the time with you two from now on?”

“We can be professional,” Steph said. She leaned her head over slightly to rest on Bucky’s good shoulder. He dropped his arm back to her waist. “In a professional setting. But I’m not Captain America right now. I’m just some kid from Brooklyn.” She turned her head to smile up at Bucky. “Who found what she’s spent years looking for.”

Bucky smiled and kissed her forehead. “Likewise…” he mumbled.

“You both were right all along,” Dum Dum said. When Steph turned her head to look at him, he smiled. “You’re both idiots.” He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to head out. See you tomorrow, Cap.” He nodded to Bucky. “Heal up, Sarge.” He waved and then walked out of the room.

Steph turned to look at him again. She straightened up and then she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. She didn’t move for a minute and she turned her face into his neck before whispering, “I love you…”

He wrapped his arm around her and held her as tightly as his weakened state would allow. “Yeah… I love you too…”

He could feel her smile. “It’s going to take a while to get used to that.”

He chuckled softly. “I think we’ve got time.”

 

The hospital only held Bucky for observation for another day. The morning after that, they released him to Steph’s care, along with a long list of things to watch out for, and recommendations on how to get by with one arm. At the bottom of the list were notes on how to obtain a prosthesis, if he so desired one. He crumpled up the paper and stuffed it in his pocket.

It was an odd sensation, not having his left arm. He still had his shoulder, but he felt extremely unbalanced, and as they walked away from the hospital, he kept having to readjust, or else he felt like he’d fall over. The weirdest thing was he almost felt like the arm was still there, so when he looked down and saw empty space, it would surprise him.

Steph kept glancing at him as they made their way to her place. But she didn’t say anything until they got there. She unlocked and pushed open the door, and then she turned to see his reaction. “Well… This is it…”

He took a step inside and looked around. A bag that contained his few possessions from Camp Lehigh sat by the door. Steph had collected it earlier, though it was only a few changes of clothes, and the books she’d given him, which he now realized was her attempt to jog his memory. The main room was pretty sparse. There was a couch, and an end table with a radio on it. A writing desk sat against the opposite wall. A couple books were piled up there, sitting beside Steph’s shield. And that was it.

“You bring this thing home?” he asked and nodded over to her shield.

Steph set down the bag of painkillers the doctor had prescribed in case his arm started troubling him. Neither he nor Steph had bothered to tell the doc that painkillers wouldn’t work. They said as little as possible about anything relating to the super soldier serum.

“I like to keep it on hand,” she said. “Never know when something might happen.” She walked into the kitchen. “Hungry? I might have… um… something…”

“I’m okay…” He glanced into the small kitchen and found only a wooden table and a few odds and ends on the counters. He made his way down a narrow hallway. At the end was the bathroom, and off to the side was the bedroom. It wasn’t huge, but it was big enough to hold a full sized bed, and a chest of drawers.

Here he was, after all these years, standing in Steph’s bedroom again.

_ “You’re going to get sick too, if you continue to hang around me.” _

_ Bucky sat up on his knees next to Steph’s bed and gently laid a new cold, wet towel across her forehead. “Nah, I’m good. Spend so much time around you that my immune system is great.” _

_ Steph laughed, but that just made her start coughing. She turned her face into the pillow and sounded like she was trying to hack up a lung. _

_ “Careful, or you’re going to give yourself an asthma attack too.” He rubbed her back.  _

_ The coughing subsided as she rolled her head so she could look at him. Her eyes were watery and red, like the rest of her face. But she smiled. “Thanks, Buck… You don’t have to do all this, but I… appreciate it…” _

_ “Someone’s gotta.” He moved the towel again, and in the process, gently brushed a few soaked strands of hair out of her face. _

_ “I’ve got no one else…” She reached out and shakily took his hand. “Just you…” _

_ “Then you’ve got me.” He squeezed her hand and smiled. “You’ll always have me.” _

“What are you thinking about?” Steph asked quietly from behind him. He turned to see she was standing in the doorway, with her back against the doorframe and her arms crossed.

“Just…” he waved his hand at the bed, “old stuff.”

Steph glanced at the bed, and then at him again. A blush started to creep up her face. “Oh, I see…” She glanced away from him quickly.

He glanced back at the bed and then smirked at her. “What’re  _ you  _ thinking about?” He walked across the room and stopped so he was also standing in the doorway, essentially trapping her against the doorframe.

“Nothing…” she said evasively, but her face just turned redder.

So he laughed and moved closer, sliding his right hand along her hip. “That so?” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against her ear.

“Don’t make fun of me…” she said quietly. Her hands came up around his neck.

“Wouldn’t dream of it…” He peppered kisses along the side of her neck.

“Bucky, Bucky…” She moved one hand to his chest to gently push him back. She met his eyes and he could see she was still red. “You’re still injured. And I-I… um…”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Don’t worry. Just cause we’re finally together, doesn’t mean I think we need to immediately jump into bed and have sex.”

Steph’s whole face lit up red. She pulled back one hand to cover her face. “Good lord, Bucky…”

“Sorry, was that inappropriate?” He smirked widely.

She pulled back her hand so she could look at him. “Just remember some of us haven’t slept our way across Brooklyn!”

He chuckled. “I wasn’t that bad.”

“Certainly seemed like it to me…” She pulled back her other hand and ducked out from around him so she could walk back to the living room.

“Hey…” He followed her. “You know it wasn’t… I thought I couldn’t be with you. So I tried to be with everyone else to get over you. Didn’t work.”

She turned to look back at him. “Meanwhile I thought you’d never want to be with skinny little Steph Rogers.”

“That’s all I wanted.”

Steph smiled and shook her head. “We really were idiots…”

“Apparently we just needed a war to straighten us out.”

Steph smiled at him wryly. Then she sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Well, at some point, we’re going to need to go buy food cause I don’t have anything here. As for tonight…” She glanced over at the couch. “You can sleep in my bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Steph.” Bucky raised one eyebrow. “We can share a bed without doing anything else.”

“You’re injured and still healing,” she pointed out. “I don’t want to accidentally jostle you in my sleep.”

“So you sleep on the right side.” He smiled widely.

She looked at him and then rolled her eyes. “Fine. But it’s your own fault if something happens.”

“Noted.” He walked up to her and kissed the side of her head. “You’re thinking too much about all this.”

“Well it is my first time being in a relationship and having to take care of a recent amputee all in one go.”

“Well, it’s my first time being a recent amputee.”

She smiled up at him. “Come on. Let’s go grab some sandwiches from the deli around the corner.”

“Lead the way.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you go. Some well-deserved fluff.


	18. Chapter 18

“So what do you think?”

“Hmm…” Peggy hummed as she flipped through files. “I don’t know, Steph… He certainly can’t do anymore field work. Even if he does get a properly fitted prosthesis.”

Steph leaned forward from where she was sitting across Peggy’s desk. “I know that. And he… he seems reluctant to try a prosthesis, anyway.”

“Is the injury not fully healed?”

Steph sighed and ran her hand through her hair. “No, it’s healed as much as it’s going to. Only took a couple weeks.”

Peggy looked across at Steph. “What then?”

“We need to find him  _ something _ .”

Peggy sighed. “Steph, he took a major, traumatic injury. He already was a POW in the war, where he was held captive for years and tortured. He could just… retire.”

“But I think he’s going stir crazy. It’d be like asking me to just retire.” The only thing they’d managed to find for him so far was SHIELD paperwork. Even paperwork for an international spy organization was still mind-numbing and boring.

"You don't have to spend the rest of your lives fighting, you know," Peggy said thoughtfully.

"It's in my blood." Steph smiled. "Literally." She looked at the stack of papers on Peggy's desk. "Bucky's too. Even with one arm, he can't get away from the fact he has the super soldier serum in his veins..."

Peggy sighed. "I… might have something he could do. That isn't just paperwork."

"Really? What is it?"

Peggy shifted around some papers. "I’ve been trying to convince Howard, so this isn't 100% approved yet. But I'd like to recruit a fresh wave of young SHIELD agents."

"By young, you mean..."

Peggy looked across at her. "They probably missed serving in the war. The majority of our recruits come from the military. I want a young group unjaded by the horrors of war."

"You know that also means inexperienced."

"And that's where I believe Barnes will come in."

"You want Bucky to… train young recruits?"

"Just at the first stage. He does have war experience. And I have a feeling he will do well at it."

" _ Bucky _ ?"

Peggy smiled lightly. "I need Howard to sign off on the project first. But then, yes, I want to assign this to Barnes."

“You think Bucky will make a good instructor?”

Peggy smiled lightly. “Actually, yes. He was a Sergeant in the war, was he not? He knows how to lead. And he is not easily intimidated. Besides, he can train new recruits with only one arm.”

Steph thought about it, and had to admit to herself that Peggy had a point. "Well, if you say so..." Steph pushed herself to her feet. "Thanks, Peggy.” 

“Where are you off to?” she asked.

“I've got to go get ready for a mission."

Peggy waved her off. "Good luck."

Steph headed back to her own office. She didn't necessarily really have to go on this field mission personally, but being active kept her from focusing on the things bothering her. Without meaning to, she let out a soft sigh as she walked through the door.

"Something wrong?" Bucky asked from where he was sitting in a chair with his feet up on the front of her desk.

"Oh. No. Just thinking." She walked around the desk and discovered her mission reports were done and neatly stacked up. "You finished these for me?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "I was bored. And doing SHIELD paperwork is better than doing nothing..."

She moved to sit on the desk next to his feet. “Peggy might have something for you… That isn’t just paperwork.”

“Really?” Bucky pulled his feet down and sat up straight. “That I can do with one arm?”

“Yeah. She wants you to train new recruits to SHIELD.”

Bucky stared at her. “Me? Why?”

“You have the war experience, and the super soldier serum.” Steph smirked. “And you won’t let anyone get away with any shit.”

He smirked as well. “Well, that is true.”

“So if she does get her new recruits, you’ll train them?”

“Got nothing better to do…” He pushed himself to his feet and moved to stand between her legs, pinning her against the desk. “What about you?” he asked, just a bit of a suggestive tone to his voice.

“I have a mission to get ready for…” she said slowly, but she still slid her arms around his neck. 

“Yeah?” He leaned forward so he could ghost his lips along the side of her neck. “When’re you leaving?”

“Three hours… Which means I need to get ready…” She closed her eyes and tilted her head slightly, though, to give him more room.

“No, it means you need to get ready in an hour or so.” His hand traced circles against her hip and he latched his teeth onto her earlobe.

“Bucky…” She really did want nothing better than to lose herself in his embrace. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t let herself. So she pulled his head back to kiss him softly, and then she slipped away from him. “Really, though. I’ll see you when I get back. Go talk to Peggy about her plan for recruiting new SHIELD agents.”

He looked disappointed, but he didn’t try to argue. “Okay. Good luck on the mission.”

She smiled, and tried not to look troubled. “Thanks.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.” She walked out of her office, and as soon as she turned a corner, she sighed and ran her fingers through her hair again.

 

Steph hadn’t realized just how badly Bucky slept most nights until she’d started sharing a bed with him. He didn’t have nightmares every night, but they did happen at least a few times a week. Luckily, the first time hadn’t been the first night they’d slept in the same bed. He had slept peacefully that whole night. But the following night, he woke her in the early hours of the morning by thrashing around and making soft, agonized noises. At first, she thought his arm had been hurting him, but then she realized he was still asleep. When she finally managed to wake him, he looked so vulnerable and wrecked. They stayed up that night and he explained about the nightmares, after much prodding from Steph. 

“How long has this been going on?” she had asked quietly.

“Ever since you pulled me out of that Hydra cell…” he had admitted.

“Jesus, Bucky. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“They’re just nightmares…” he had tried to say as an excuse.

“And talking about them is  _ good _ for you,” she shot right back. It was probably only because he was exhausted that the argument worked. Bucky could be quite stubborn, and no one liked looking weak. So every time after that, she made him explain his nightmares and then helped him get back to sleep. Even if he never said as much, she liked to think it helped.

However, Bucky wasn’t the only one who had nightmares, it seemed.

Steph was angry, and devastated, and felt so, so helpless. She didn’t know what was happening until her world shook and she suddenly came back to consciousness and realized all those emotions were just from a dream.

Bucky sat up next to her, with his right hand on her shoulder. He looked tired, but mostly concerned. “Steph…” he said quietly. “You okay?”

Steph took a shaky breath and realized her face was wet. She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands and pushed herself up into a sitting position, half turned away from Bucky, with her legs tucked under her. “Yeah, yeah… Fine… It was just a dream…” She tried to make her breathing return to normal, but the air still came out in a shudder. It felt like when she used to have asthma attacks.

“It wasn’t just a dream. It was nightmare.” She heard Bucky shift around on the bed behind her. “You always make me talk about whatever nightmares I go through. You can’t be a hypocrite and try to ignore this.”

“I… You have good reason…” She turned away and threw her legs over the side of the bed, but she didn’t stand up. Instead, she gripped the edge of the mattress and bowed her head. “I just…” She sighed and rubbed at her face again. “God, Bucky, it felt so real…”

“What felt so real?” He moved to sit behind her, and gently touched her shoulder again.

She glanced back at him. “You  _ died _ . I thought I… I thought I killed you…” She raised both hands to rub at her face, afraid she would start crying again. “I held you and just felt the life go out of you. And it was all my fault. It was so real. I killed you…”

He moved to his knees behind her and wrapped his arm around the front of her shoulders and leaned over to kiss the top of her head. “It was a dream. I’m okay, see?”

She clutched onto his arm with both hands and took a few shaky breaths. “When I cut off your arm, it didn’t work, and you bled out in the snow.”

“That didn’t happen, Steph. You saved my life.”

She turned her head down into his arm. “But I could have killed you…”

“You think I would’ve died that easily?”

She smiled despite herself. “Sometimes these things are out of our control…”

“Wouldn’t leave you like that…” he whispered and squeezed her tighter.

“It was like… everything I had worked for, everything I had done, it was for nothing… I tried so hard to find you.” She turned so she could tuck one leg under her on the bed and looked up at him.

“And if not for that, I’d have died in some Hydra cage, unaware of who I even was.” He smiled crookedly. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

Steph dragged her other leg onto the bed again and moved over to him. She clutched the front of his T-shirt in both hands and turned her face into his chest. “You can’t promise that…”

“I can.” He wrapped his right arm tightly around her again. “Cause, honestly, if you could always manage to bounce back after everything that happened to you before the war, then I can damn well make sure to do the same.”

She laughed, even though she still felt like crying. “That so?”

“Yeah.” He rested his head on top of hers. “Not even god can stop me.”

"You're unbelievable..." She gripped his shirt harder.

"Yeah." He pulled back so he could lift her face up. "But I love you." He leaned down and kissed her softly.

After a moment of quiet kissing, she pulled back and sighed. She rested her forehead against his. “I love you too… Sorry I’m such a weepy mess right now.”

He chuckled. “You don’t have to be stoic and strong all the time, Steph. With how often I wake up from nightmares, I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

“With everything you’ve been through, you have a legitimate reason to have the nightmares.”

“And you don’t?” He wrapped his arm around her tightly. “Sometimes I can’t believe everything you’ve done for me.”

“I would do anything for you…” She smiled up at him. “To the end of the line…”

He smiled. “Yeah.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Think you can get back to sleep now?”

She nodded. “Can you…” She turned her head down against his chest. “Just… hold me…”

He smiled and pulled back his arm so he could brush her hair out of her face. Then he maneuvered them so he was lying on his back again and she laid her head on his chest. He gently stroked his fingers along her back and shoulder. “I’ve got you. Get some sleep.”

“Thanks, Bucky…” She closed her eyes and curled in towards his body. It was easier than she thought to drift back off to sleep again. This time, she slept through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, some hurt/comfort. Proof that I actually am just a huge sap underneath it all.
> 
> Also, I love all your comments.


	19. Chapter 19

Bucky watched the group of recruits file into the—for all intents and purposes—classroom in front of him. He leaned back against the front wall with his right arm crossed across his body. There was nothing he could do about the empty space where his left arm should’ve been. But he wasn’t going to pretend like it wasn’t there. The sleeve was neatly pinned up just below his stump.

The recruits (in his mind, he called them “kids”) stood in a single line facing him. Most looked pretty awkward or unsure of what they were supposed to do. Some stood with their hands clasped behind them and some let their arms dangle at their sides. One kid, he noted, stood up straight with his arms firmly pressed to his sides. That didn’t stop him from looking just as awkward as the rest of the bunch. But Bucky still logged that information away.

The whole lot of them looked to be about eighteen or younger, like they’d just come out of highschool or were even still in school. Carter had said she wanted young new recruits. This was what she meant. All things considered, Bucky only had probably about ten years on them, but he felt decades older.

All together, there were only fifteen recruits. Since Carter had picked them, there were two girls in the mix. She had mentioned she was going to make damn sure SHIELD was more welcoming to women than the SSR had been. The two girls didn't look any more awkward or nervous than any of the guys. He'd just have to see how they did.

"So, welcome to SHIELD," he said after a minute. Carefully, he pushed himself away from the wall and let his right arm hang at his side. Several pairs of eyes immediately went to the pinned up sleeve on his left. Several more seemed to be pointedly trying not to look.

"I'm Sergeant James Barnes, of the 107th. When I served in the war. Now I'm a SHIELD agent. Which is what you all what to be or else you wouldn't be here." He looked around at all of them. "How many of you served?"

The recruits glanced at each other, then the one who'd been standing at attention raised his hand.

Bucky nodded to him. "What's your name?"

"Clyde. Tim Clyde."

"How long did you serve?"

"Um… Two months, sir."

Bucky stared at him, then he sighed. "Right. Anyone else?" His question was met with silence. "Okay… I'm not a drill sergeant. I'm not here to put you through basic training or boot camp. Those of you aiming for field work will get that later on. I'm here to make sure you have the basic skills and knowledge to survive at an intelligence agency. Which includes being able to defend yourself and knowing how not to crack under pressure." He looked around at all of them. "How many of you have ever shot a gun?"

Tim Clyde raised his hand, as well as a guy who looked like he could be a linebacker. Surprisingly, one of the girls raised her hand too. The number was way smaller than Bucky was hoping for.

He looked at Clyde. "Army?" The guy nodded, so he turned to the girl. "Name?"

"Louisa Hudgens, sir."

"Where'd you learn to use a gun?"

"I used to go hunting with my father."

"Ever kill anything?" Bucky asked.

"Rabbits mostly, and pheasants."

The linebacker snorted. So Bucky rounded on him. "Got something to say?"

"Rabbits are nothing. I've taken down a buck."

Bucky frowned. "And you are?"

"Fred Rollins."

"Ever shot a man, Rollins?" He didn't answer, so Bucky nodded. "Shooting a human is very different from shooting an animal. If you have to shoot something while working for SHIELD, you can be pretty sure it won't be a deer." That didn't seem to put the group at ease. "Unless you're doing field work, you probably won't have to shoot anyone. But this can be dangerous work. You have to be prepared."

Bucky couldn't help cursing Carter for putting him up to this. He wasn't a teacher. He was like a walking reminder of what could go wrong.

"Is that what happened to you?" Rollins asked. "Weren't prepared?"

Bucky narrowed his eyes at the guy. "Not exactly."

"Did you lose your arm in the war?"

The other recruits fidgeted, but leaned in closer. No one else had the nerve to ask, but they all wanted to know, of course.

Bucky put on his best scowl, the kind his grade school teacher used to use to put the fear of god in them when they misbehaved. "No," he said. "I came out of the war with both arms intact." There was silence. He could practically see the gears turning in those heads. "I lost it on a mission for SHIELD." There it was, that fear of god he was trying to invoke. "Still think it's a laughing matter not learning this stuff?" When no one answered, he said, "Right. Let's begin."

 

“So it seems Barnes is actually doing fairly well with the new recruits,” Peggy said to Steph out of the blue as they went through paper-work from a recent mission. Without Bucky, Steph had been pulling Peggy into field missions more and more often. Peggy couldn’t replace Bucky’s super soldier serum strength, but she was a lot better than any of the other agents they had.

Steph lowered the papers she was reading through and looked at Peggy. She had her heels off and her feet propped up on the edge of her desk. Paperwork was laid out in front of her on the desk, but her lunch was off to the side and she absent-mindedly had been picking at it for the better part of half an hour. She hadn’t looked up at Steph when she’d made the comment.

Steph moved her own finished lunch off the desk and leaned forward. “Yeah? Where’d you hear this? Or are you watching security footage of his classes?”

Peggy smiled, but kept reading her report. “The recruits are testing well. I think this will be a successful launch to our new program.”

Steph shook her head and leaned back. “Bucky hated teachers growing up. I can’t believe he’s become one. He wouldn’t believe this either.”

Peggy glanced at Steph, the smile still on her face. “Well, he’s not exactly a conventional teacher. He’s training students in proper gun usage and hand-to-hand combat, after all.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s found something he’s good at. I thought he was going to go crazy just doing paperwork…” Step looked at her own reports, and then turned to look out the window Peggy’s fabulous corner office had. 

Peggy carefully set aside her reports and lowered her feet to the floor so she could lean towards Steph. “You’re still blaming yourself for what happened.”

Steph sighed and leaned back. “Of course I am. I brought Bucky on that mission. I brought  _ all _ of you on that mission.”

“We all survived,” Peggy reminded her. “That is no small matter.” She reached out and put her hand over Steph’s. “You weren’t the only one who decided to pursue that lead. And you got everyone out. You know you actually saved James’s life.”

“Yeah, that’s what he keeps saying too…”

“It’s been months, Steph. Why…”

Steph sighed again and ran her fingers through her short hair. “Because every time I look at him, I see what I’ve cost him, what he’s lost. And I can’t help but feel like I’m still trying to save him.” She turned to meet Peggy’s eyes. “I finally have him and I can’t… I can’t just be  _ with  _ him.”

“Well, I am the last person to go to for relationship advice.” She paused and tilted her head. “Except for perhaps Howard.”

Steph smiled wryly at that. “True.”

“But I can tell you that you are not the only soldier to feel guilt over a debilitating injury or the death of a fellow soldier, even when you didn’t cause it.”

“I know I should just be happy we all made it out. And that he remembers me and…”

“Can I make a suggestion?”

Steph looked at her again.

“Go watch the new recruits. Watch what he’s doing now. I think it will put you at ease.” Peggy smiled and leaned back in her chair. “Perhaps you should wear your uniform and see if you can shock them a bit, too.”

“Bucky would probably get a kick out of that.”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

Steph smiled. “Thanks, Peg. I think I’ll do that.”

 

Steph wandered down from her office to the training room where she knew Bucky had the new recruits. She was actually in uniform, though she’d left her shield up in her office. But she hadn’t come off a mission. She did just want to see what the reaction would be.

The door to the training room was open, so she didn’t announce her presence by entering. Instead, she lingered in the doorway with her arms crossed and watched the fifteen recruits spar with each other. Some were in pairs, and some in groups, probably to account for the uneven number. Bucky wandered among them and occasionally seemed to give instructions, or suggestions. Steph saw there were two women in the class. Leave it to Peggy to include female recruits. They were paired off with some of the slighter men in the group, and one of the women seemed to be doing quite well.

At one point, Bucky stopped a pair, pointed out a few things with his right hand, and then ducked low and spun, sweeping one of the guys’ legs out from under him. He fell to the mat on his back, and lay there a moment, trying to get his breath back. Steph smiled to herself. Bucky definitely still had it. The others had stopped so they could watch. Most had amused, impressed expressions on their faces. One person, Steph noted, frowned and glared at Bucky’s back, as if he was annoyed a one-armed man could move that swiftly. The expression disappeared when Bucky straightened up and looked around the room. 

“And that’s why you stay aware of your surroundings,” he said to the group at large. “And always be able to figure out how to get back up.” He rolled his hand in a circle to indicate they should continue. When he turned around again, he saw Steph standing in the doorway and grinned.

Bucky walked over and leaned against the wall. “Hey. What brings you down here?” His eyes did a once over of her uniform. “Did you have a mission today?”

“Not really.” Steph couldn’t help the small smirk that came to her face.

Bucky raised an eyebrow, but the corner of his mouth quirked in a smile. “Then why the uniform?”

“Thought I’d come down and see these new recruits.” The smirk softened into a smile. “Peggy says you’ve been doing good with them.”

“Yeah?” He glanced back at the group. “They’re dedicated and hardworking. Carter picked out the right group of kids.” He nodded his head toward the room. “C’mon. Let’s see if we can freak anyone out.” He walked back towards the recruits and Steph followed.

A few noticed Steph and stopped dead in their tracks, but the rest were unaware until Bucky said, “Hey. We’ve got a special guest here.” Everyone looked over and several more pairs of eyes went wide. “Everyone, this is Captain Steph Rogers, also known as—”

“ _ Captain America… _ ” someone whispered.

Steph smiled. “Well, that’s more for propaganda anyway.” She glanced down at her uniform. “But the uniform is recognizable by now.” Steph looked sideways at Bucky, who was giving her a very amused smile. “For now, I assign and direct all field missions for SHIELD.”

“So,” Bucky turned his head to look at the recruits again, “who wants to try a match against Captain Rogers?”

Nobody moved for a second, and then the guy that had given Bucky the strange look stepped forward. He seemed to have significantly more bulk than any of the other recruits, which was probably why he thought he stood a good chance. “Sure. Shouldn’t be too hard. You might be Captain  _ America _ , but you’re still a dame.”

Bucky frowned and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Steph stepped forward. “Well, let’s see, then.” The other recruits moved back to give them space. “What’s your name, recruit?”

“Rollins,” he said as he stalked around her.

“Okay, Rollins. Let’s see what you’ve got. And don’t forget, I assign field missions. So if you hope to be a field agent, I’m the one you need to impress.”

The words barely finished coming out of her mouth before Rollins was on her, punching at her face. She had to admit, it looked like a pretty powerful swing. But Steph leaned to the side and dodged it easily. She grabbed his arm and pulled it down to flip him head over heels so he landed on his back. She set her hands on her hips and leaned down over him. “Not bad, but it’s worthless if it doesn’t connect. Would you like to try again?”

Rollins scrambled to his feet, so Steph took a step back and crossed her arms. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Bucky was grinning madly. He probably remembered being in the same position, ages ago. Rollins paced back and forth, and didn’t immediately lash out this time. So Steph uncrossed her arms and watched him.

Rollins must have seen an opening, because he darted at her again. This time he feinted to the right before moving to the left and trying a left hook. This time, Steph didn’t dodge. She held up her arm and blocked. Before she could grab his arm and repeat her previous move, Rollins retreated back and tried swinging his leg at Steph’s side.

She ducked under the kick and sidestepped around him. Rollins spun and tried to kick her with the other leg. It was a good move on his part, unfortunately, Steph tilted her head to the side to avoid it and shoved his leg away, upsetting his balance. Rollins stumbled, but he stumbled away from Steph so she couldn’t use the opportunity to attack. Actually, she could have, but she didn’t. Instead, she waited for him to gain his footing again. There were a few snickers from the onlooking recruits.

Rollins glared around, but couldn’t figure out who had laughed, so he turned his attention back to Steph. He ran at her again and launched into a series of punches that he probably thought would eventually make contact. Steph took a few steps back and ducked and dodged around the punches without counter attacking at all.

“Come on, fight me!” Rollins finally yelled.

So Steph did.

She moved at him too quickly for him to see. In one smooth motion, she grabbed his arm and twisted it back up his back, while also knocking his ankle out from under him so he fell forward onto his face. She moved with the fall and pressed her knee down into his back to hold him in place.

“Want to keep trying?”

Rollins groaned. “Fine… you win…”

Steph used her knee on his back to push herself up, which made him grunt in pain. She took a few steps back so she could rejoin Bucky. He tilted his head and smiled at her, his blue-grey eyes shining. She couldn’t help but smile back.

Eventually, Bucky tore his eyes away from her to look back at the recruits. Rollins had gotten to his feet and he did not look pleased. “That’s why Captain Rogers is the head of field missions. But it’s not all super soldier serum. A lot of it is experience. It just takes training.”

Steph gave him an impressed smile. Look at Bucky actually being a teacher.

“So, does anyone else want to try?” he asked.

The rest of the recruits were quiet. Steph looked around at all of them, and then she nodded to the woman who’d been holding her own earlier. “What about you…?” she trailed off, waiting for a name.

“Hudgens, ma’am,” the woman said.

“Come on, Hudgens. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Hudgens glanced at the other recruits, and then she took a step forward. Well, At least she didn’t try to get out of it. But she did look nervous as hell.

This time, Steph did not wait for her opponent to make the first move. Instead, she circled around Hudgens before moving close and jabbing her in the side. Hudgens stumbled back, but kept her defense up, Steph was pleased to see. Steph darted at her again, and this time, Hudgens blocked, and then retreated.

Steph straightened up and gave her a pleased smile. Hudgens smiled tentatively, but then it disappeared and a serious look of concentration came to her face. So Steph stopped holding back. She went at Hudgens with a series of jabs and hits, some of which Hudgens blocked, until she realized it was more useful to dodge and let Steph’s own body weight carry her forward.

Hudgens ducked around a punch at the very last second, which actually surprised Steph. She brought her knee up while Steph was still moving past her and connected with her stomach. It would have been a serious blow to anyone else, but Steph only stumbled a little and raised her hand to her stomach.

Instead of launching into another attack, she straightened up. “See there? If you’re fighting an opponent who is stronger, or larger than you, use that to your advantage. Let them do the work and use their own body weight and momentum against them. You don’t have to be the biggest and strongest to win.”

“Something all of you should keep in mind,” Bucky said from off to the side. “Alright, that’s it for today. Go take a break. I’m sure plenty of you have bruises to take care of.”

The recruits separated and started to filter out of the room. Steph gave Hudgens a smile and a nod of approval, and then she walked back over to Bucky. “Not bad, Teach.”

“Please do not call me that.” He rolled his eyes, but he smiled at her. They waited until the recruits all walked out of the room. Rollins glared at the two of them as he passed and Hudgens gave Steph a tentative smile.

Once everyone was gone, and the place was quiet again, Bucky leaned over, a smirk on his face. “By the way, I probably took way too much enjoyment out of seeing Rollins get taken down a peg. Guy’s been nothing but a thorn in my side from day one.”

“Happy to be of service.”

Bucky laughed and moved closer to her to wrap his arm around her waist. He kissed the side of her head. “I love you.”

Steph smiled, amused. “Love you too.” She touched his shoulder and kissed him softly, once. “So do you have anything else you need to do here?”

“No, I”m good for the day.”

“Okay. Let me change out of my uniform, and we can head home.”

Bucky let her move away from him. “You wore it just to intimidate them, didn’t you?”

Steph smirked over her shoulder as she lead them out. “Maybe.”

Bucky laughed.

“It was Peggy’s idea.”

Bucky laughed harder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much the reason I write Female!Steve. Because I take great joy in having a female Captain America take down sexist guys.


	20. Chapter 20

Peggy had been right. Watching Bucky with the recruits, watching Bucky with purpose, helped relieve the guilt she held deep in her chest over his injury. So she wandered down from her office sometimes and just watched them. It seemed the other recruits had found new respect for Hudgens, but Rollins was just as nasty as he was on the day Steph met him. And Bucky really was learning how to adapt to only having one arm. 

It wouldn’t make up for what she’d done to him. Nothing was ever going to do that. But at least, it seemed she hadn’t ruined his life. She knew Bucky and Peggy would argue with her. They’d say it wasn’t her fault, and all those same tunes. Steph didn’t know if she was ever going to fully believe that. But if Bucky could adjust to only one arm, then so could she.

That was how she came to her decision as she unlocked the door to their apartment after a long day at SHIELD. Bucky had finished with the recruits hours before, so he had headed home without her. She came in to find him stretched out on the couch with a book in his hand. He lowered it and smiled at her when she walked in.

“Hey. I thought you were gonna spend all night there or something.”

“Very nearly,” she said. She slowly walked over and sat down on the new coffee table, facing him.

He set the book face down on the arm of the couch so he could use his hand to push himself into a sitting position. Once he was sitting up, he reached out and tenderly traced his fingers against her cheek. “You okay? You seem… worried about something.”

“Maybe a bit…” She smiled and laced her fingers together with his against her face. “Bucky, I…” How did people normally do this? While Peggy certainly had had suggestions for once things got going, she was not very helpful on getting started. “I love you,” she decided on. She moved to sit next to him on the couch. “And I… I want to show you how much…” She leaned forward and kissed him, not suddenly or passionately, but in one long tender kiss. She lifted her other hand to touch the side of his neck, and pulled back so she could look into his eyes. “I want… I finally want to…”

Bucky’s eyes sparkled, and he smiled like he was amused. “Yeah?” he asked and shifted so he could lean forward and kiss her again, this time with a little more heat behind it. “Why now? What changed?”

“I… um…” She slid her hand down to his shoulder and ducked her head to avoid his gaze. “I felt so guilty. And I’m tired of feeling like that when I’ve… I’ve wanted you for so long…”

Bucky moved his hand to lift her face back up. “Then let’s not wait anymore.” He shifted so he could slide his hand down her spine and kiss her deeply.

Steph leaned in close to the kiss and ran her fingers up and down the front of his chest. She found the buttons on the front of his shirt, which were loose enough that he could button and unbutton them with only one hand, and made quick work of opening his shirt.

He chuckled and slid his arm around her waist to pull her close. “Maybe, before we start discarding clothes, we should move to the bedroom.”

Steph’s face colored red. “Oh yeah.”

That made Bucky chuckle again, but he stood and took Steph’s hand, pulling her towards their bedroom. It was strange to think they’d slept in this bed many times together, in various states of undress, and hadn’t actually had sex yet. They only made it just inside the doorway before Bucky pushed Steph against the wall and kissed her hard.

Steph moaned through the kiss and fumbled at Bucky’s open shirt to push it off his shoulders. Rather than help at all, Bucky propped his hand against the wall beside Steph’s head and kept kissing her. She only pulled back enough to pull her blouse over her head, followed by Bucky’s undershirt.

After doing that, they paused, and Steph’s eyes slid across to Bucky’s stump. He followed her gaze and then looked back at her. Tentatively, Steph reached out and rested her hands on the tops of Bucky’s bare shoulders. She slowly slid her right hand over the slope of muscle and lingered just under the joint of his shoulder.

“It’s okay. You can touch,” he said softly as he watched her.

Softly, barely even applying pressure, she slid her fingers down to the end of the stump and over the scar tissue. “Can you… can you feel this?”

“Kinda. It’s like… I can feel the skin moving above the scars, so I can tell you’re touching it, but I can’t feel it directly.”

Steph looked into his face. “Does it hurt?”

He shook his head. “Sometimes. But not from this.”

Steph continued to stroke her fingers over the stump, and then she slid both hands up along the sides of his neck and leaned up close to kiss him softly. “Come to bed with me…” she whispered.

He wrapped his right arm around her waist and in one smooth motion, spun her around to deposit her on the bed. He knelt on the bed in front of her and she scooted herself back more fully towards the center so she could pull him down to join her. She slid her arms around his neck again and pulled her body close to his before kissing him long and hard. He grabbed her thigh and dragged her into his lap, at which point both of them realized they were still wearing pants.

So Steph leaned back so she could shimmy out of her trousers and kick them off the side of the bed, and then she helped Bucky struggle out of his since he did only have one hand to work with, after all. They moved back together like magnets. Now that they were finally going to do this, it seemed like they couldn’t get enough skin, enough contact.

Bucky dragged his mouth along the front of Steph’s neck and down the rise of her breast while he fumbled behind her to unclasp her bra. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised that he could still do that even with one hand. He smirked at his accomplishment and she pulled his face close to kiss him again, while she dropped the garment off the side of the bed.

For some reason, she thought she would be more nervous than this. To be fair, she certainly was, but not about the nudity, not about the intimacy. This was  _ Bucky _ . She’d known him her whole life. So she only tilted her head back and let him glide his lips down the front of her throat and draw circles along her lower back with his finger tips.

One of her hands moved to the back of his head to tangle in his hair when his mouth moved lower and his lips wrapped around one hard nipple. She bit her lip, but still moaned from the action. She could feel him smirk against her skin.

Part of her wanted to linger, wanted to savor every moment, but the other part of her wanted more, faster, and didn’t want to wait at all. So she only gave Bucky a few more minutes to trail his lips and his tongue down her skin before she pulled him back up to kiss him deeply.

“Bucky, I want you…” she whispered in his ear.

So they discarded the last few pieces of clothing and then discovered they had to go on a bit of a hunt for a condom. Luckily, Bucky did have a stash. Steph hovered over his lap with one hand resting on his chest. She looked down at him and could feel a blush high on her cheeks. But she didn’t hesitate. He had his hand on her hip to guide her down and she slowly sank onto him.

She bit her lip hard at the strange, intrusive feeling of it. It wasn’t  _ bad _ , necessarily, and it certainly wasn’t painful, as she’d always been lead to believe. But it was… awkward. Bucky, meanwhile, had closed his eyes and was breathing heavily. His fingers dug into her hip.

“God, Steph… You feel…”

Steph adjusted and moved experimentally, which made Bucky moan deep in his throat. The awkwardness slowly lessened, so she tried pulling off and sliding back down and discovered that felt really good. She moved again and then drew in a sharp breath as a spike of pleasure raced up her core. She clutched onto Bucky’s shoulders and kissed him sloppily.

“Bucky… Bucky…” she chanted.

He wrapped his arm around her so he could direct her movements somewhat, while she buried her fingers in his hair and held onto him like a lifeline. Muttered gasps and groans escaped them, but not many words after that. Not till a while later, when they lay on their backs on the bed, blissed out and covered in sweat.

Steph looked over, and then rolled onto her side so she could lean over and kiss Bucky softly, tiredly. He brought his hand up to the back of her head and gently slid his fingers through the ends of her slightly damp hair.

“I can see why you enjoy this…” she mumbled.

He smirked. “Well, haven’t had any since… way before I was captured by Hydra.”

“So I imagine this won’t be the last time.” She smirked mischievously. 

He just laughed. “God, I hope not. I love you Steph.”

She smiled and leaned over to kiss his cheek before settling down to lay her head on his chest. “I love you too…”

He traced his fingers along her bare back, and she drifted off to sleep like that, feeling more content and peaceful than she had in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I freaking hate it when you spend a long time following a slow burn, and then they only just get together and the story ends without them even going at it. So I decided to not do that. Enjoy.


	21. Chapter 21

Bucky never did end up with his own office at SHIELD. He spent most his time down with the recruits, and Steph was usually off on missions. So he just used hers if he needed a place to hang out. Most of the time, when he was done with the recruits, he would head home. But it was lonely when Steph was away.

He sat at her desk with his feet up and flipped through psych evals on the recruits. He didn't get final say on whether the recruits would progress through their training, but his opinion was a large part of the decision. Unfortunately, it looked like Rollins was too good to turn away, even though the guy was an asshole.

Bucky looked up when he heard footsteps approach the open door. Howard Stark stood there with his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.

"I thought I might find you here," he said.

Bucky set the papers on the desk and dropped his feet to the floor so he could push himself to his feet. "Why? You know Steph's away on a mission, right?"

Stark rocked back on his heels. "Of course. Along with Peggy. That's actually why I wanted to come talk to you now."

Bucky raised an eyebrow. Stark wanted to talk to him without Steph or Carter present. That couldn’t be good.

Stark probably read that on his face, because he quickly said, "Don't worry. It's nothing bad. I just wanted to talk without Peg or Steph trying to shoot down my suggestions."

"About what?"

Stark looked at Bucky for a moment. "I heard you decided not to use a prosthesis at all."

Bucky frowned. That came out of the blue, and was honestly not what Bucky was expecting Stark to say. "What's the point? It'd just be like attaching a stick to my arm with a little hook at the end. I'd rather have nothing than that."

Stark grinned widely. "Then I have something to show you." He turned on his heel and walked right out of the office like he expected Bucky to follow. Bucky considered going back to what he was doing, but then he jogged after Stark, making sure to close Steph's office door. He caught up with Stark and gave him a curious look. 

The grin was still on Stark's face. "I was tinkering around in my workshop, trying out different things. I think you're going to like it."

"Like what?" Bucky asked, but Stark only grinned at him and lead the way to his workshop.

Stark had a pretty expansive space at his private home, that was full of things he didn't want anyone else to see. But that didn't mean he didn't have just as large of a space at the SHIELD New York office. Most of the room was taken up by various devices and machines that Bucky wasn't sure he wanted to guess the purpose of. Stark lead him around these to a metal table at the back of the room. Most of the random tools and notes on the table had been shoved to one side to make room for…

Bucky walked towards the table, and without meaning to, started to reach out. But he stopped and looked at Stark. "Is that a metal arm?"

"It's a metal  _ prosthesis _ ," Stark said, clearly pleased with himself.

Bucky looked at it again and shook his head. "How does that even work? It would have the same problem."

"No, you see, that's the beauty of my design." Stark moved over to the table and carefully lifted the metal arm. He twisted it at the shoulder joint and pulled off a metal plate. "This base plate is attached directly to the skin and is connected to the nerves. So you can attach and detach the arm for maintenance. But when you do attach the arm, it should have the same mobility as a normal flesh and blood arm."

"What?" Bucky stared at him. "How is that possible?"

"Neurolinks," Stark said as if that explained everything. "So it will function like a real arm. Probably better than, even, since it'll be stronger."

Bucky looked at the arm, then at Stark. "So you're saying..."

"I’m saying you can go back into the field with this, instead of sitting around wondering if anyone is watching Steph's back."

Bucky and Steph’s relationship wasn’t exactly a secret at SHIELD, especially with people who knew them well. He wanted to be mad at Stark for trying to use that against him, but he honestly worried about that very thing every time Steph went off on a mission. He was supposed to watch her back, and he couldn’t do that when he couldn’t even go on field missions.

“Let’s say I consider this… what would we need to do?”

“That’s actually the reason I wanted to suggest this without Peggy or Steph around. The procedure to install the arm will probably be… just as painful as it was to cut off your actual arm.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “You have no idea how painful it was to have my arm sawed off.”

Stark flinched at Bucky’s word-choice, just a bit. He’d probably seen the damage when they’d returned from that mission and Bucky had still been unconscious. 

“Well, I have a pretty good idea of how painful this will be. I will need to attach the base plate directly to your arm and connect it to your nerves, which means you can’t be put under for the procedure.”

“Well, the serum makes that hard, anyway.”

Stark gave him an appraising look. “I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting a reaction like that.”

“I didn’t say I’d do it.” Bucky looked at the arm, and then he reached out and ran his fingers over the metal plates. “You sure it’ll work?”

Stark scoffed. “It’s one of my inventions. Of course it will work.”

"How long will it take?" Bucky looked up at Stark.

He had his hands in his pockets again with an expression on his face like he knew he'd already won. "Probably a few hours for the initial procedure, and then another hour to calibrate the arm." He paused. "Pegs and Steph won't be back til day after next. Knowing you, you'll recover fairly quickly with that serum."

"Are you suggesting doing this without telling them, before they get back?"

Stark gave him a look. "You may be undecided, but you can be pretty sure Steph would be against it. She still carries a chip on her shoulder that weighs a metric ton from having to cut off your arm in the first place."

Bucky looked away. He knew that. Probably everyone knew that. No matter what anyone said, she wouldn't stop blaming herself. Bucky wasn't sure what Stark was playing at, bringing up that Steph would be against it. He'd think that would be a vote on the side of not doing it. But then again, if Bucky had been in the States way back when, he would have done everything in his power to stop Steph from going through her own procedure for fear that it was too dangerous. And look how that turned out. Bucky would be dead if Steph hadn't become Captain America. And here was his chance to fully pay her back, to make sure he could fight by her side no matter what.

So he could do the safe thing, say no and continue to live his life with one arm. Or he could take a chance on Stark's invention.

Bucky looked back at Stark. "Okay. Though I seriously doubt it'll be worse than having the arm taken off in the first place."

Stark grinned. "Tell you what, I'll buy you a drink if you're right. And if I'm right, you owe me a drink."

"Shouldn't it be the other way around? If you put me through that much pain, you should owe me a drink."

"Fine. I'll have this all set up tomorrow morning." He reached out and clapped Bucky on the shoulder. "Don't worry, this will be great. And I'll get to see the practical application of this technology. It's a win-win for both of us."

Bucky looked back at the arm. "Let's hope so."

 

“I can’t get in touch with Howard,” Peggy said from the radio.

Steph looked over from the back of the plane. “Maybe he’s not at SHIELD right now.”

Peggy frowned. “No, he is supposed to be. And he likes being available when I go on field missions just in case there needs to be a director to run things.”

“Well, it is Howard Stark,” Dum Dum said. “You never know with that man.”

“They keep saying he’s preoccupied with something…” Peggy looked at the radio suspiciously, then she moved out of the cockpit to join Steph and Dum Dum in the back.

"Isn’t that normal for Howard?" Steph said. 

"Yes..." Peggy said slowly. "But I heard he'd been working on something..." She trailed off, and didn't explain what she was thinking. And she wasn't able to get in touch with Howard the rest of the flight back to New York.

So the first thing she did upon walking into the SHIELD base was to find Howard's secretary, Maria. "I want to see Director Stark. We have a mission debrief to go over."

"Oh, um..." Maria stuttered, which was unusual for her. Normally she was very confident. She had to be, to stand up to Howard. "Mr. Stark is still working with Agent Barnes."

"Wait, what?" Steph took a step forward. "Agent Barnes?" She looked at Peggy. "Bucky didn't mention anything about working with Howard on something."

"And he wouldn't do it voluntarily," Dum Dum commented. "He can't stand the guy."

Peggy pursed her lips together. "What exactly are Director Stark and Agent Barnes working on?" she asked Maria.

"He… wouldn't say," she admitted. Peggy was probably the only person who could pull information about Howard out of Maria.

"Oh good Lord. I imagine Howard has convinced James to be his guinea pig for something."

"For  _ what _ ?" Steph asked sincerely. Bucky had been tortured and experimented on for years. "He wouldn't readily agree to being a test subject for just anything."

Peggy looked at her. "Then it's easy to imagine the one thing he would agree to."

Steph stared at her. She couldn't possibly mean what Steph thought she was implying.

Peggy looked back at Maria. "They're in Howard's lab, I imagine?"

"Director Carter..." Maria started to say.

Peggy sidestepped around the woman and walked towards the entrance to the R&D department. Steph was quick on her heels, and Dum Dum followed with an amused grin on his face.

Peggy lead the way to Howard's workshop and pushed open the set of double doors before striding in confidently, her heels clicking on the tiled floor. "Howard?" she called out.

Steph could just make out hushed voices, before they quickly fell quiet. Even without being able to understand any words, Steph recognized Howard and Bucky's voices. She headed to the back and found Howard leaning over a table with various tools around him. And Bucky sat on the opposite side with his shirt off, loads of bandages and medical tape wrapped around his left shoulder joint, and what appeared to be a metal appendage attached to what had been a stump.

"What the  _ hell _ is this?" she asked at the same time she realized it was a metal arm, and Bucky appeared to be resting the elbow on the table while Howard went at it with the small tool in his hand.

Both men looked at her. Bucky opened his mouth and started to stand, but Howard reached out and put his hand on his shoulder to hold him down. "Don't move," he commanded. To Steph he said, "I made Barnes a prosthesis. What's it look like?"

Steph moved closer so she could get a better look at it. Peggy and Dum Dum seemed just as surprised. "But it's… metal," Steph said.

"Yup." Howard finished whatever he was doing and closed a metal plate on the side of the arm. "Show them."

Bucky looked at Howard, then stood and held out the arm to Steph so Peggy and Dum Dum could see as well. The metal hand opened and then clenched into a fist, and then the arm bent at the elbow before straightening out. Steph stared at it, and then looked at Bucky’s face. “Is that…?”

He couldn't help the grin that came to his face. "Yeah. I'm doing that."

"Holy hell," Dum Dum muttered.

"But how...?" Steph asked.

"Neurolinks,” Howard said. “The arm is hooked up to the same nerves that would have controlled his original flesh one."

"Nerves?" Steph glanced at Howard. "Like, it's hooked up to your brain? Isn't that dangerous?"

"You're one to talk,  _ Captain America _ ," Bucky said with a raised eyebrow.

Steph flushes slightly. He had a point. Project Rebirth had probably been way more dangerous than this. "What about all this?" She reached out to gently touch the bandages wrapped around his shoulder.

"It's from the surgery," Howard said nonchalantly. "But Barnes heals fast. Those'll be off in a day or so."

Steph frowned and pulled her hand back. "Granted… But I can't believe you didn't tell me beforehand."

" _ You  _ didn't tell  _ me _ ," Bucky said quickly. He didn’t need to clarify what he was talking about. 

Steph glared at him defiantly. " _ You _ were overseas fighting in a war.  _ I _ was only gone for a few days. And, in case you forgot, Agent Barnes, I am still ranked above you and am your commanding officer."

Bucky nodded his head towards Howard. "But I was working directly with the SHIELD director."

"Don't drag me into your lover's tiff," Howard said, which made both of them glare at him.

"Co-director," Peggy reminded them calmly. She gave Howard a stern look. "Howard, a word, please." She turned, and with clicking heels, she walked out of the room. Howard didn't dare not follow, so he hurried after her, which left Bucky and Steph facing each other, with Dum Dum standing off to the side.

He watched Howard leave the room, then he looked at the other two and crossed his arms. "You know, Cap, it would be good to have Bucky back in the field with us." He shrugged. "Those are my two cents. I'm going to head out. Don't forget we still need to do a mission debrief." He walked over and gave Bucky a small smile and squeezed his right shoulder. "I hope this works out for you, Sarge." He waved and walked off.

Steph waited until she was sure he was out of earshot, and then she rounded back on Bucky. "What if this hadn't worked? And you hadn't even told me you were going to attempt it?" Her fists shook at her sides. "If something happened to you, and I was  _ gone _ ? Damn it, Bucky, I can't go through that again..." She looked away quickly. Unexpectedly, her voice got thick. "I didn't think I'd have to worry about that while you're here."

She heard him sigh. "But at the same time, I've had to sit here and wait patiently while you've gone off on all these dangerous missions."

Steph frowned and looked at him. "They're not all dangerous."

"You may be Captain America, Steph, but you're not invincible. You can still get injured. You can still die. And if I still had only one arm, there'd be nothing I could do to prevent that." 

He paused and looked at her. Then he looked down at the metal hand, turning it back and forth. He looked back at her and slowly reached up to touch her cheek with his metal fingers. They weren't as cold as she would have thought. He smiled a bit in wonder, and she had to imagine this was as strange and intriguing an experience for him as for her.

"I said I'm with you 'til the end of the line, and I mean it. I will do whatever it takes to make sure I can watch your back."

"Bucky..."

He smiled. "You're not the only one who gets to take unnecessary, stupid risks."

Steph smiled too. “At least you admit it was stupid.”

He shrugged. “We’re super soldiers. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Steph shook her head. “Everything.” She leaned up and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply, pressing her body close to his. She was keenly aware of the fact that he was shirtless.

Bucky’s right hand went to her hip. The metal left fingers flexed against her cheek, but then he moved the left hand around her back and held her close. It was a strange experience, being held in both his arms, when she had gotten so used to only one. She wondered what it would have been like, ages ago, if she’d actually told him she had always been in love with him before either of them had gone off to war. The new arm was definitely harder than a flesh arm would have been. But it was nice to feel two hands on her.

“We leave the room for one minute, and this is what you two get up to,” Howard’s voice said from off to the side.

Steph pulled back to look at Howard and saw Peggy standing next to him with an amused expression on her face.

Howard held up both hands. “Not that I’m one to stop you. Just make sure to be careful with the arm. That shoulder is still healing. So if you two get into it, don’t go crazy.”

Steph dropped her arms, but turned her face away in embarrassment. 

“Howard,” Peggy chided. “Don’t be vulgar.”

“I was just reminding them.” He smirked. “Really, though. Don’t overstrain the shoulder joint, or it can get infected and the shoulder plate won’t take.”

Bucky nodded and reached over to the table to pick up his shirt. He slid it over his arms and then reached down with one flesh hand and one metal hand to button it up. He smiled in amusement. “I forgot how easy this was supposed to be,” he mumbled.

“You’re dismissed to go, Captain Rogers,” Peggy said.

Steph looked at her. “What about the mission debrief?”

“I have informed Director Stark of the mission. You can turn in your full report in the morning.” Her eyes slid over to Bucky quickly before going back to Steph. Steph took that as a sign that Peggy realized she probably needed to take care of some personal things.

So Steph nodded. “Understood. Then we’ll head out.” She turned to Howard, and said a bit icily, “Assuming you’re done.”

“Yup,” he said, either unaware of her icy tone or choosing to ignore it. “I’ll check on it tomorrow. But the arm should be calibrated correctly. Let me know if there are any problems.” Howard smirked. “Like dexterity problems.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and fixed his collar. “Yeah, yeah.” He looked at Steph and nodded towards the door. “Good to go?”

She nodded and lead the way out. They didn’t really talk as they walked the short distance from the SHIELD headquarters to their apartment. Bucky kept his hands in his pockets the whole time, probably to hide the metal hand. Every now and then, he seemed like he had to right himself because he wasn’t used to the extra weight on the left side.

As soon as they got inside, Steph turned and faced him. “Let me see.”

Bucky looked at her in surprise, but he faced her and started to unbutton his shirt again. He smiled wryly. “You know, normally this would indicate something completely different.”

“Normally.” She reached out and pushed the shirt off his shoulders. He let it fall to the ground. She moved closer and gently slid her hand up the metal arm. “Can you… feel this?”

“Not the same way I would be able to with a normal arm.” He watched her. “But Stark said there are pressure sensors, so I can tell when I touch something, or when something touches the arm.”

Steph slid her arm up to the bandages wrapped around his shoulder. She looked at his face, and he nodded, so she slowly started to unwrap the bandages. She frowned when she saw the scar tissue revealed under the bandages. The metal plate wrapped around his left shoulder, and the skin connecting to it looked raw and inflamed. She gently ran her fingertips along the scar tissue. 

“This looks bad…”

“Wasn’t nearly as bad as losing the arm in the first place.”

Steph sighed and pulled her hand back. She straightened the bandages out and then reached up to rewrap them around the shoulder. “That’s something… But, ultimately, we are going to have to see how this operates in a fight. Or if you can still use a gun.”

He looked amused. “Are you saying that as my commanding officer?”

Steph shook her head, but she did smile lightly. She tightened the bandages, and then leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Yes. But I say this as me.” She looked into his eyes. “I love you. Next time you are going to do something like this, please tell me.”

“Well, I don’t plan to lose any more limbs and let Howard Stark replace them.” He smiled.

“Good.” She leaned up and kissed him tenderly.

He slid both arms around her. “And I love you too.” He kissed her again, and then smirked. “You know, what Stark kept insinuating isn’t necessarily a bad idea…”

Steph smiled and shook her head. But she pulled him off towards their bedroom.

 

Steph and Bucky circled around each other. They were both wearing sweatpants and tank tops, so Bucky’s metal arm gleamed under the fluorescents. They stared each other down, and then moved at the same time. While Bucky had been a bit rusty, he had enough experience from training the new recruits that he could keep up. After only a few rounds, he was able to give Steph a run for her money.

Their movements were so fast, they were almost a blur. Even though they both had strength from the super soldier serum, the metal arm was stronger, so Steph had to maneuver around it to avoid being taken down. Bucky did get a few decent hits in, and so did Steph. But they kept ended up in a stalemate. 

They were both panting hard by the time they separated again. Steph watched him, and then she smiled and straightened up. “Okay, that’s enough. I’m calling a break.” She walked over to a bench and picked up a towel to wipe at the sweat on her face.

Meanwhile, Bucky went to the water fountain against the wall. He ducked his head under the water and then leaned down to drink heavily. He straightened up and ran his flesh fingers through his hair to brush the wet locks out of his face. He turned back to grin at Steph. 

“So, Captain, how’s that?”

Steph looked over at him and smiled lightly. “Well, it is very impressive, Agent Barnes.”

“I’ll say.” They looked over to the door to see Howard and Peggy standing there. Howard looked very pleased, and Peggy looked amused, her default expression when she was with Howard. “The arm seems to be doing fantastic.” He strode over to Bucky. “Let me check the calibration.”

Bucky held out the arm and let Howard check it, so Steph moved over to Peggy’s side and stood with her in the doorway so she could watch Bucky and Howard. “How much did you see?”

“A decent bit,” Peggy said. She tilted her head to glance at Steph.

“So what do you think?”

“Hm.” Peggy looked back at Bucky and crossed her arms loosely. “While the final opinion is yours, as the head of field missions, I would like to say that very few of our field agents can even keep up with you.” She smiled lightly. “Even Dugan and I can no longer do that. James has been out of practice for over six months, and there were a few times there he almost beat you.”

“Yes, I know that…” Steph said slowly.

“So it seems to me it would be quite a wasted opportunity not to make him a full field agent.”

“What about training the new recruits?” Steph ask lamely.

“The initial training is done. The ones who will move on have been chosen, thanks in no small part to Agent Barnes. We can find another instructor for the next batch.” She tilted her head, considering something. “Though, it might not be a bad idea to have you or James teach the field agents in between missions.”

“You’re talking as if it’s already established that Bucky will be a field agent again.”

Peggy smirked at Steph. “Isn’t it, though?”

Steph sighed and rolled her eyes. “I know it wouldn’t be appreciated by anyone if I tried to keep him safe by keeping him off field missions.”

“Would you like it if it were the other way around?”

“Of course not. I would kick and scream and protest until I ran out of breath. So I do understand.” She looked at Bucky and watched him test out rotating the arm at the shoulder joint. “But he’s been through so much… Some of which I could have prevented, and some I couldn’t have.”

Peggy watched her. “The work is inherently dangerous. So I doubt either of you would let the other continue alone.”

“I made a promise to… to myself. That if Bucky survived what happened at the Red Room, I’d devote my life to being Captain America, to using my strength to help people and the country. So I can’t stop.”

“Well, it seems to me that you’re going to have to accept that James won’t stop either.”

Steph smiled wryly. “I know.”

“So you  _ have  _ already chosen to reinstate him as a field agent.”

“Of course I did. I just wanted to hear the argument for it from you.”

“Well, I am the practical one.” Peggy turned to fully face Steph. “And quite honestly, Steph, if you two have managed to survive this far, I doubt anything could kill you.”

Steph actually laughed, which made the two men look over. “That is true.” She went to join Howard and Bucky, and Peggy followed. “So how does it look?”

Howard grinned. “Well, not to pat myself on the back, but the arm appears to be synchronized perfectly.”

“It is a little heavy,” Bucky said, amused.

“Yes, I’m working on lighter models. Unfortunately, Steph’s shield used all the vibranium I had, so I had to go back to other metals like steel. But I should be able to come up with a lighter version in a few months.” He grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Just think of the mass production capabilities. I might even be able to create limbs that are hollow on the inside and can be worn like armor. The offensive potential of something like that would be amazing.”

Steph smiled. “So in your opinion, Howard, is the arm approved for field missions?”

Bucky looked at her and Howard said, “Oh absolutely. I’d want to check it after each one, just to be sure. But I see no reason why not.”

“Great.” She turned to look at Bucky. “Well, then, Agent Barnes. I’m happy to reinstate your status as a field agent, as long as you accept.”

Bucky smirked. “Really? Of course I do.”

“Good, cause we’ve got one planned for tomorrow, and I want you on it.”

“I’ll be there, Captain.”

“You better be. I need you to watch my back.” She moved close and leaned up towards him with a smile on her face.

“Then you can be damn sure I’ll do that.” They moved together at the same time. She touched his metal wrist lightly and he moved his right hand to her waist as she leaned up and kissed him, completely disregarding the fact that Howard and Peggy were standing right there.

Howard cleared his throat. “Alright, you two, at least wait until we’re out of the room.”

Steph pulled back and laughed. “Don’t worry, Howard, we’re nowhere near as bad as you.”

“I hope not. That would be quite an accomplishment.”

Peggy rolled her eyes. “Only you would think of that as an accomplishment.”

“Well, if you need some pointers, Peg…” he said suggestively as they moved back towards the door.

“No thank you. I am quite alright without any of your help.”

“Oh, does that mean you’ve found someone to have a little fun with?”

“I am not answering that,” Peggy said as they turned the corner out of Steph and Bucky’s view.

Steph turned back to Bucky, to give him an amused look. She leaned up to kiss him once, chastely on the lips again. “Ready for another round?”

Bucky smirked and moved back a few steps. “You’re on. And this time I’ll win.”

Steph smirked as well. “We’ll see about that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course I threw the metal arm in there. Actually, I went back and forth about whether or not I wanted to include it. But I do like coming full circle to the original story. Also, I just have a ton of fun with Howard.
> 
> So, that's it! I hope you enjoyed this ride as much as I did! And see, it's a happy ending and everything.


End file.
